DIY Vicacopter Is Open Source And Autonomous

We have seen several interesting helicopter or quadcopter devices turn up recently. One of the coolest was the Parrot AR.Drone that we played with a bit at CES. If you are into making your own gizmos, a DIY project to make one has been posted at Make.

The project was offered by Jack Crossfire and is called the Vicacopter. The device is an autonomous VTOL UAV and the build sounds challenging. A caveat is included stating you need to be an expert in PIC assembly, electronics, and the devices source code to make it work.

In all the copter has under $100 in parts in it and can fly and take off unaided. The device has a sonar sensor for indoor flight and GPS for outdoor flight. The missions for the copter are written in picoC scripting language. The thing is pretty darn cool.