Make a flying robot powered by your Android phone

If Dominos has anything to do with it, your pizza could be delivered by a drone in the future. The company carried out a trial in the UK last year to deliver two large pepperoni pizzas using a small octacopter.

Of course, drones are expected to have a much wider-ranging impact on our lives than simply getting us fed on time, from retail through to pipeline maintenance and even healthcare. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has used a drone to find a man who was injured and lost in near-freezing temperatures, following a car accident. Thanks to the drone, they were able to save his life.

Coders are the key to unlocking this drone-powered future, helping make the transition from off-the-shelf civilian drones to customised “smart” drones. Essentially a smart drone needs enough embedded processing power, communications technology and sensors to give it autonomous potential. While many of today’s civilian drones aren’t up to scratch, creating something that is needn’t be all that hard.

According to the Washington Post, graduates with drone skills will soon be very much in demand. So for those of you who fancy a head start in drone development, all you need is your Android-based smartphone, a bit of kit and some helpful hints from Intel. By following Intel’s tutorial on making Android-controlled drones, you could soon be cleared for take-off.

• This blog post is written by Softtalkblog, and is sponsored by the Intel Developer Zone, which helps you to develop, market and sell software and apps for prominent platforms and emerging technologies powered by Intel Architecture.

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