If you ever get into trouble while swimming in a lake or ocean, help may just come in the form of a flotation device-toting flying drone. Students from the King Low Heywood Thomas School of Stamford, CT, in cooperation with Flying Robots LLC, designed a clip-on accessory called Project Ryptide that fits onto just about any consumer drone or RC helicopter. It clips on in under 30 seconds and weighs just 410 grams.

Any RC copter that can carry a GoPro camera can carry a Ryptide self-inflating flotation device, though the team developed it to work with the DJI Phantom. After the short 30 second preparation, the drone can carry the life-saving flotation device to the distressed swimmer and drop it. A radio-controlled trigger activates the floatie’s inflation.

There appears to be a lot of room for user error here since a human being directs the drone and decides where to drop and deploy the flotation device. Distances can be incredibly difficult to judge from shore to water, so some kind of proximity sensor would be useful. Still, even dropping the flotation device in the general area of the distressed swimmer would be more helpful than standing on the beach doing nothing.

The post Rescue From Above: Inflating Float Ring Clips Onto Drone first appeared on Gajitz.

Real flying cars are actually zooming into the realm of reality, but that’s not stopping dreamers from coming up with some pretty outrageous and far less possible designs. The Skylys Project from Mix Aerospace is an electric vehicle that combines the best attributes of an electric car, a helicopter, and an airplane.

Skylys is a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) vehicle, capable of taking off from a stationary position just like a helicopter. It’s hard to tell from the scant information on the company’s website, but in the concept renderings the Skylys seems to have two versions: a vehicle with permanent multi-directional propellers and one that features separate car and wing modules.

The second version of the car allows you to drive around on four wheels in a vehicle small enough to navigate tight city streets. Then, when you need to travel a long distance or just want to circumvent ground traffic, you back the car up into the wing assembly which attaches securely, turning your car into a flying machine.

Mix Aerospace believes that the first viable uses for the Skylys will be emergency responders like ambulances and police officers. But the ultimate goal would be to get the cars into the driveways of regular people at some point. Right now Mix is still trying to get funding to get their company off of the ground and take the Skylys from a concept to a working prototype, which they believe could happen around 2018.

The post Convertible VTOL Vehicle Takes Off From Street to Sky first appeared on Gajitz.

Being stuck in traffic and having no idea what’s going on ahead of you seems unavoidable, but Renault may have figured out a high-tech way around it. Their KWID concept, unveiled at the 2014 Delhi Auto Show, is a high-tech vehicle that features its very own built-in drone.

The Flying Companion is stored in a chamber in the back of the vehicle. If you need to scout ahead or just want to take some cool aerial pictures of your surroundings, you can operate the little flying machine from a tablet integrated in the car’s dashboard.

Under the hood, the KWID operates on a 1.2-liter petrol powered turbocharged engine with dual-clutch transmission. The gear shift is replaced with touch commands right next to the steering wheel, making the driving experience seem simple but luxurious.

The KWID is also Z.E. Ready, making it able to receive and use electric batteries for power. Although the car is two-wheel drive, it was designed to look like a rugged off-road vehicle. It will be Renault’s first offering to be designed specifically for release outside of Europe – it is expected to be introduced in India.

Inside, the car is a cocoon that holds the driver and passengers in a comfortable nest-like network of elastomer material. LED lighting, electric operated front bench seat, and electric opening doors – and let’s not forget the personal Flying Companion – make the KWID a seriously high-tech car that we’d love to take out on the open road.

The post Renault’s High-Tech Concept Car Comes With its Own Drone first appeared on Gajitz.

The 3D printing revolution continues with pens that can sculpt with extruded plastic in any shape, size, and place you choose. The 3Doodler Pen is a great example of just how creative this technology is getting, but it’s not the only product of its kind on the market. A man called Matt Quest set out to create a working remote control toy with a 3D printing pen called 3DAir Pen – and he did it with amazing results.

By using a small template and sheer ingenuity, Quest formed the body of his quadcopter with a 3D printing pen. He affixed electronic components and rotors taken from another mini-quadcopter. In about two and a half hours, he completed an awesome little machine that could actually fly.

The time-lapse video above shows the entire process from beginning to end. The quadcopter’s builder makes it look simple, but he obviously has some previous skill in putting things together. Products like the 3DAir Pen and 3Doodler are making it easier every day for would-be artists, tinkerers, and makers of every type to experiment and play to their hearts’ content. We predict future generations of engineers who grow up building their own toys and gadgets and learning in the process.

The post Creativity Taking Flight: 3D Pen Doodled Flying Machine first appeared on Gajitz.

What kid doesn’t dream about their bike taking flight as they race down the street on a hot summer day? British inventors Yanish Read and John Foden certainly did, and it led them to create the Paravelo, the world’s first working flying bicycle. Under the company name XPloreAir, the duo developed that product which can be used on the ground as a conventional bike or, with an attached trailer, to fly among the clouds.

The bike part of the design is really quite simple but elegant. It’s a lightweight folding bike that’s perfect for commuting, but not so much for long distances or for speed riding as its ground speed tops out at a lowly 15 MPH. It folds up small enough to stash in your hallway or coat closet, but if you want the added power of gliding through the air you’ll need a rather large space for the biofuel-powered, fan-toting trailer.

The trailer has an attached fabric wing that makes the bike fly sort of like a parawing. Although the inventors advise against buying and flying the Paravelo without proper training, no special license is required to take this bad boy up into the air. It can climb to the frankly terrifying altitude of 4,000 feet, where it can reach a speed of 25 MPH. The battery can keep you going for up to three hours.

Read and Foden suggest that the Paravelo could bring about a whole new type of urban getaway that they like to call “flamping.” It’s a mash-up of flying and camping, the idea being that you hook the trailer to your bike, take off into the air, and set down somewhere quiet and away from the city to enjoy a weekend of solitude. When the weekend is through, you simply pack up again and fly back into your real life, which will undoubtedly seem way more awesome now that you have a flying bike.

The post Flamping Time: Flying Bike Designed to Get Away From it All first appeared on Gajitz.