Flone, The Flying Phone
winning project of NEXT THINGS 2013 – NEXT SPACE, the Second Global Art and Technology Challenge
Flone, the flying phone, a proposal by a team formed by multidisciplinary artist and computer engineer Lot Amorós, technical engineer Cristina Navarro, and industrial engineer Alexandre Oliver, has been selected as the winning project of Next Things 2013 – Next Space, the Second Global Art and Technology Challenge, the joint call for ideas by Telefónica I+D, the research, development and innovation company of the Telefónica Group, and LABoral.
Flone functions as a backpack for smartphones which turns the mobile phone into a stand-alone flying apparatus which can go up to a height of 20 metres from the ground, come down, rotate and carry out other programmed tasks, such as taking photographs or video recordings. The pack consists of a clip that locks the telephone which has a USB communication cable connected to it that connects to an Arduino IOIO board or Phonedrone. Initially it will only dispose of two degrees of freedom: to ascend, descend and rotate. Telephone sensors enable the Flone to be self-contained and perform a programmed task, such as rise to 20 metres, take a photograph and come down, or it can be remotely controlled by another smartphone with a wifi or 3G connection.
Its objective is to make air space accessible to everyone as a research platform, providing a range of applications for them to operate with a smartphone alone. The combination of its different sensors -camera, microphone, GPS, accelerometres and gyroscopes- actuators -LED flash and speaker- together with its telematic connections -Bluetooth, Wifi and 3G-, transform Flone into a multimedia drone, a mobile communication unit that moves around in a new space: the public air.
Project produced in the context of the call NEXT THINGS 2013-NEXT SPACE
