Parrot Minidrone Hydrofoil

While Parrot’s famous drones have already conquered air and land, they have now unveiled a new drone that will take on water. Called the Parrot Minidrone Hydrofoil, this drone has been designed with a hydrofoil body that has a detachable aerial drone on top of it.

The Parrot aerial Minidrone is attached to the deck of the main unpowered hydrofoil body using a hinged mount and when the drone is started, instead of the aerial drone flying up it pivots into a perpendicular position that turns the whole drone into a miniature fan boat!

As the speed of the boat increases, the hull rises up and out of the water with the support of its 3 foils. This hydrodynamic structure and alignment of the Hydrofoil drone lets it have a high speed of about 5.4 knots (10 km/h), and also allows the user to perform sharp turns without the drone losing any balance.

The Parrot Minidrone Hydrofoil can be controlled using Bluetooth, and the compatible and free iOS or Android application. Users will get a range of up to 20 m (65 ft).

The whole drone is powered by a 550-mAh lithium-polymer battery, which has a flight time of about 7 minutes on a single full charge. A big plus point of investing in this drone is that you can also remove the Minidrone and fly it separately. It has a built-in camera that can record VGA videos at 640 x 480 pixels.

Parrot is going to release the Minidrone Hydrofoil in August and the new drone will be priced at US$179, and will also have a choice of 2 different designs - Orak and Newz.