Watch: A Drone Controlled By An Apple Watch

Watch: A Drone Controlled By An Apple Watch

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

A Taiwanese technology research has found a way to make both Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and the Apple Watch cooler by having them work together. They found a way to control a drone using the smart watch, making for a pretty convincing, real-world simulacrum of the Force.

It looks like a regular UAV, and it is, other than one crucial modification – the controls. When you see how Mark Ven, from Taichung City, Taiwan is flying the machine you may think for a second you’re watching a scene from the latest Star Wars. The truth is less magical, but not much less impressive.

Previously we’ve needed complicated controls to fly drones, but now we can use a wearable device, and through human behaviour and gestures directly interact with them – using a hand to control and fly drones directly,” said Mark Ven, co-founder of PVD+.

The team at PVD+ have developed an Apple Watch app to interpret hand gestures and translate them into drone control commands. By moving his hand, Ven can control the altitude, tilt, and pitch of the UAV, a Parrot AR. Drone.

Controlling drones with hand gestures is neat enough, but the software Ven and the PVD+ team developed can do even more. Turning on a light by clapping your hands is nothing new, but the team’s algorithm allows users to control smart light bulbs by drawing letters in the air, changing the colour of the light.

“When I clap twice the light turns on, as it detects that I’m clapping. When I write an English “R” in the air the red light turns on, and when I write an English “Y” the yellow light turns on. Lastly, when I clap twice the light turns off.”

PVD+ are far from being the only team working on hand gesture control technologies. But if nothing else, this demonstrates a brighter future for the rest of us, where the Force might become a little bit closer to reality.