Drones are a popular gift this holiday season, from expensive professional quality drones like the Chroma Drone that I reviewed a couple weeks ago, to much more affordable ones from online retails like Amazon. Most drones that you see are also called quadcopters because they have four rotors. But I doubt you’ve ever seen a drone like the Bionic Bird. This drone looks like an actual bird with a 12 inch wingspan and a tail. But what makes it special is that it flaps its wings to fly – just like a real bird. The Bionic Bird Drone is controlled with an app on your smartphone and can reach altitudes of up to 328 feet. It can fly for up to 8 minutes on a 12 minute charge on the portable charger which is shaped like an egg. The egg can recharge the drone multiple times before it requires its own recharge. The Bionic Bird can fly indoors or out and is priced at $149.95. You can find more info at mybionicbird.com and buy one from Amazon.
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
Amazing.
I just saw this type of “mechanimal” featured on Xploration Earth 2050 on Amazon. They had an all white one that flapped its wings incredibly realistically.
And I don’t have to wait till 2050.
And thanks to the FAA, it will have to be registered with the federal government.
I’m not sure when or if that has started yet. I couldn’t find anything when I reviewed the Chroma drone a couple weeks ago.
https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=19856
Thanks for the link!
Registration doesn’t feel onerous to me.
We register cars with license plates. Add tags to dogs. And ham radio operators have to get licenses. And here in NYC I would not feel it bizarre to even register kites. They can easily get tangled in electric wires and cause lots of problems.
The actual link for registration is http://www.faa.gov/uas/registration/.
Registration starts December 21. There is a fee of $5 which can be used to identify all aircraft operated by the same user. (The regulation will include drones, traditional model planes, and this new flapping bird.)
The $5 fee will be refunded for the first 30 days of the registration period. So that’s three years free.
The hardest part of the process will be getting the registration number on the aircraft.
What bugs me is that a few idiots have screwed up the RC hobby for thousands.
I’ve been flying, building scale plastic model planes, and RC stuff since I was a kid in the 60’s. I can’t remember ANYTIME, where people like me who fly RC planes, ever flew one in a prohibited place. Shoot, as dangerous as some of our craft are, we always fly in an “RC park”, way out in the country, or in an open field, away from people. I guess the problem with quadcopters, is they do not require the room to operate.
But now because of the stupidity of people, coupled with GPS which makes these things easier to get off the ground, now people like me will be required to “register” our airplanes. I think that most hobbyist will probably just forget to do it, until some picky government official or tattletale pops up on an RC park, and starts looking for the government approved stickers. Some of us go to great pains to make our planes look as authentic as possible, and I can’t see a lot of us placing a stupid sticker on an authentic looking scale plane. Maybe they will allow them to be placed on the transmitters instead.