Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Senseable City Lab have developed a small drone that can potentially lead you wherever you want to go.
Called Project SkyCall, the drone and its accompanying app provide directions to students and visitors, much like a campus tour guide. The app lets you call a flying robot and request directions, while the drone uses your smartphone's GPS to locate you. After typing in your desired location, the drone buzzes off in that direction, but continues to track you, so that it doesn't fly too far ahead.
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"With Google Maps, the phone vies for the user's attention and ultimately distracts them from the world around them, forcing them to look down at a small screen to navigate a place," Senseable City Lab engineers told Mashable in an email. "SkyCall proposes the idea of having more intuitive modes of navigation (in this case, simply following a guide at walking pace), freeing up the user to take in their surroundings."
So far, MIT has just one automated campus guide, but the engineers said they could scale that up to a whole fleet if necessary. They are also trying to obtain permits that allow their drones to guide people around Boston.
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Image: YouTube, Senseable City Lab