Drone and quadcopter manufacture Parrot has teamed up with Ubuntu producers Canonical to create a drone attachment called S.L.A.M. Dunk which focuses on creating autonomous machines that can avoid obstacles.

The Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (S.L.A.M) is an attachment for a drone that runs Ubuntu 14.04 and ROS (Robot Operating System). Its purpose is to create “autonomous and obstacle avoidance drones and robots”.

Inside of the machine there is a NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor, 1 500 X 1 500 @ 60fps fish-eye camera, barometer, magnetometer, ultrasound sensor and inertial-measurement unit (IMU). All of this packed into a 140 gram carbon fiber shell.

Its light weight is especially important when adding it to an existing Parrot drone simply consists of securely attaching it, feeding it power and plugging it into the flight controller.

To do that all-important development work, you can plug it into a screen using a variety of ports. As it runs a desktop version of Ubuntu , this little set of sensors is actually a full PC on its own.

It has ports on the back for power, HDMI, and a mouse and keyboard by way of USB.

We don’t have any confirmation on price at the moment but it will apparently be available in the fourth quarter of the year according to New Atlas.

[Source – Insights