Transcriber: Andrea Mussap Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
I have a small drone in my pocket.
You probably all have a phone in your pocket.
Now, this drone and this phone are pretty similar.
All the sensors you need in this smartphone, your GPS,
your magnetometer, your accelerometer to tilt your map upside down
are the same sensors we use for these very small drones.
Thanks to this smartphone revolution and shrinking down all these sensors,
we are able to make very tiny autopilots.
And this tiny autopilots are needed for very small drones.
So, I predict, in five years, everybody who has now a smartphone in his pocket
will also have a drone in his pocket.
I have here a very tiny drone in my pocket
and I will try to demonstrate it today.
I'm indoor in the room, so I have to control myself.
But when I'm outdoor, I have here all the electronics,
very small electronics, which make this drone completely autonomous.
So you can fly it on Google Earth, and you say,
"OK, go to that space or to that place",
and this tiny GPS and all these smart sensors and smart software
will let it fly to that place.
Let's see how it will behave here indoor, in this room.
Always very exciting.
Let's hope technology won't fail today.
So, here you see the very small drone flying around, controlled by me.
But imagine that you are outdoor and that you just have
an iPhone in your pocket, and you select on the iPhone "Follow me".
So, you are skiing in the mountains, you have a very small camera on this drone
and this small camera wants to film you when you're going down the slope,
through the skiing experience.
Now, this is the prototype, so it doesn't have a camera yet.
But it has all the small electronics that we designed
in the University of Aerospace Engineering, in the TU Delft.
And actually all the software and hardware on this small drone
is completely open source. So everybody in the world
can contribute and can use this software and hardware to make his own small drones.
Why do we do that? Because we believe...
(Applause)
We believe if we make it open source
than more and more people have access to these drones,
and if you have access to this drones
you will see some great things popping out.
When you first set your smartphone, you probably didn't know
why you needed it, just because it's a gadget
and my cool neighbor also has it, so I need it also.
But then the Facebook revolution started and the Facebook apps were appearing.
And now everybody cannot live without a smartphone anymore.
So, the same idea waits for these small drones.
This is a floppy wing drone, a little bit bigger,
so it doesn't fit in my pocket yet, but we try to make it small also.
But if the Facebook app for this drones will appear in the future,
yeah, then probably you will find it very natural that in this audience,
in this room, small drones will be flying around.
This big pole with this big camera there probably will not be there anymore,
but there will be drones flying over the audience
trying to film me from all angles.
So all this kind of predictions hopefully will come out.
This one also has a small camera, so I will try to turn it on
and now you can see probably yourself on the big screen
while I'm flying this small drone.
This is called "The DelFly", it's a flapping wing UAV.
It's actually made, most of the items are made from foam
and from foil, so the wings are made from foil.
And it's very light weight, it only weights 17 grams.
And you can see yourself probably now
on the big screen.
So imagine that I'm not here, but that your smartphone
is controlling this drone and stays above your head
to make a bird's eye view of what is happening today.
17 grams is also very important
because if you want to operate these drones you have to be safe.
And safety is one of our main concerns when we try to optimize these drones,
so that's why we make them very light weight and very small.
(Applause)
By making them very light weight and very small,
we make it very hard for ourselves.
Maybe we can have the camera images back.
So this is the complete autopilot, what's on this drone.
If I put it in my hand you can see how small it is.
And why do we make it so small?
Because we are engineers and we have to do research
and we want to do hard things, and by making it small,
everything is harder: we have limited processing power,
so we have to make smart softwares, smart hardware to make this thing fly,
and fly autonomously.
I thank you and I hope to see more drones in the future.
(Applause)