January 7, 2014

Parrot unveils two eye-catching robots, the MiniDrone and Jumping Sumo at CES 2014

by Gavril Mankoo

We humans may not be completely ready for a robot invasion in the near future, but that certainly hasn’t stopped us from experimenting with the world of robotics. Known for its developments in robotics, Parrot has, on previous account, managed to stun the world with fancy pieces of engineering that are built to be quite smart indeed, like the AR.Drone robot. Based on this, Parrot has unveiled a smaller version called the MiniDrone at CES 2014, alongside yet another interesting bot called the Jumping Sumo. While the MiniDrone is exactly what its name suggests it is, a little drone that can be autonomously controlled, the Jumping Sumo robot on the other hand rolls around gleefully and is also capable of 80 centimeter high jumps!

The MiniDrone is still under development and packs a 500MHz processor with 1GB of RAM, an accelerometer and a gyroscope. To control the MiniDrone, users will require a smartphone application which will hook up to the robot via Bluetooth. Pricing details associated with these robots have not been released yet and availability too has to be decided. We’re sure to hear quite a lot about these robots by Parrot in the next few days, given that they’ve managed to grab quite a load of attention at CES 2014!