Not for saleResearch demonstrator. Festo's brochure is dated April 2014, with a US press release in June 2014.
Not for sale (research)Not programmableHelium spheresIndoor swarmIR camera trackingAuto-charging
Not for saleShipping: Not for sale. Never sold.
Remote control: Not possible. Flight paths are computed by Festo's central master computer and sent to the spheres by radio.
Overview
A group of eight helium balloons that fly together indoors without colliding, either in formation or individually. Ten infrared cameras around the room track LED markers on each sphere and a central computer sends back the moves, a set-up Festo pitched as indoor positioning for future factories. The reversible propellers borrow the wing principle of the BionicOpter. The same year's BionicKangaroo and the later eMotionButterflies and FreeMotionHandling gripper sphere built on the same tracking approach.
Specifications
| Category | Drones · Indoor drones |
|---|---|
| Released | 2014 |
| Country | Germany |
| Availability | Not for sale (research) |
| Programmability | No programmability |
| Best for | Professionals & labs |
| Vision sensors | No vision sensors |
| Actuators | Brushless / direct-drive motors |
| Audio | No audio |
| Compute type | Arduino / ESP32 / microcontroller, Laptop / PC as the brain |
| Remote control | Not programmable |
| Size | 95 cm helium-filled sphere with a 25 µm PE/PP film shell, 8 spheres per installation |
| Drive | 8 brushless motors with adaptive propellers on the equator (4 horizontal, 4 vertical), each giving over 42 g of thrust forwards or backwards |
| Compute | 1 main processor, 8 motor-control processors and further processors for time sync, radio decryption and ZigBee, plus a central master computer |
| Vision | None on board (10 room-mounted infrared cameras track the spheres) |
| Lidar | None |
| Sensors | IMU (3 gyroscopes, 3 accelerometers, 3 magnetometers), 4 active infrared LED markers |
| Runtime | Not published (2 Li-poly cells, spheres dock at charging stations on their own) |
| Speed | Not published |
| SDK | None public |
Ratings & reviews
Ratings and reviews load on the live site.
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