Nokia N900 Gets Parrot AR.Drone Remote Control [Video]

The Nokia N900 continues to show its appeal this week; after getting Android 2.3 Gingerbread on Wednesday, now the Maemo smartphone has become the next way to control Parrot's AR.Drone. As we found in our AR.Drone review, Parrot only offers iOS remote control apps officially, and has left the APIs open for developers to create Android and other apps themselves. That's just what Maemo chief engineer Kate Alhola has done with her N900.Video demo after the cut

Unlike the iOS versions, the N900 app for controlling the AR.Drone uses two on-screen joysticks rather than the accelerometer to control the quadricopter. Still, we're guessing that could be addressed in future versions. Otherwise you get the same live video stream and direct WiFi connection, together with all the AR.Drone's own intelligent auto-hover and object avoidance.

While the project has been a way of letting the N900 work with a new toy, Alhola also has another motivation: to prove that neither the N900 nor Maemo are dead. Responding to speculation that both device and platform are facing an imminent demise, she instead suggests that "the best option today is to develop with maemo5 with Qt and Qt Quick and when a MeeGo handset is released, just deploy your application for it, it is that easy."

[via My Nokia Blog]