Students Live Out Drone Cosplay Fantasies With Hovering 'Snowstorm' Copter
Students at the National University of Singapore developed the drone that flies with a pilot
Forget about drones for the holidays. We’ll be asking for this one-person flying machine that a group of National University of Singapore students built.
The Snowstorm, as they’re calling it, uses nothing but regular D.C. battery to lift a single pilot into the air for up to five minutes. It floats like a butterfly and sounds like a massive nest of bees. After all, the copter uses 24 different propellers to launch itself into the air, producing an exaggerated version of the buzz that is now familiar from the common house drone.
Watching videos of it fly, it’s tempting to imagine all of us jetting off in these every morning, hovering above the trees on our way to work. But the students are already cautioning against such thinking. They say they developed the Snowstorm more as a leisure craft than a practical means of transportation.
While the helicopter-like device may not be replacing Santa’s sleigh anytime soon, it’s an awesome accomplishment for a bunch of college students. The Snowstorm already has advanced flight capabilities like yaw, pitch, roll, and thrust, and, with a few test flights under its belt, it seems to have nowhere to go but up.
As for the students developing the Snowstorm, they are planning to continue improving it with the goal of eventually bringing it to market. We certainly respect trying to make a few bucks. We just think that if we had a futuristic flying device, we’d probably take it outside and use it to score some dates.
