Erle Robotics launches the first Ubuntu powered drone

It seems world is slowly and steadily moving towards Linux powered devices. After Linux was used to power destroyers for US Navy, now Erle Robotics has used Ubuntu to power a drone.

Erle Robotics, a Spanish company, has been at the forefront of using Linux in devices and had introduced the Erle-Copter drone powered by Ubuntu Snappy Core back in February 2015, has launched the world’s first Ubuntu powered Drone on 3rd May.

The Erle-Copter Drone is powered by Snappy Ubuntu Core and the ROS framework and has a flight time of approximately 20 minutes according to the company. It can also support a payload of up to 2 kgs which means that it can mount cameras for aerial photography.

The Erle-Copter Drone comes with APM Copter and Plane pre-installed as applications with support for utilizing either the 2.4 or 5 GHz frequency bands for Wi-Fi, and 536 MB of free space for user data.

“Erle-Copter Ubuntu Core special edition drone is a Ubuntu-powered quadcopter that includes official support for new app store for drones and robots. It has official ROS support, capable of the different flight modes and ideal for outdoor operations,” says Alejandro Hernández.

The price for Erle-Copter Ubuntu drone starts from €399 ($455/Rs.28,000.00) for the basic version while the fully loaded drone will be available for Rs.€574 ($640/Rs.40,000.00) and will be available worldwide.

According to Hernández is ideal for various outdoor operations and supports the installation of additional apps via a special App Store of Snappy and Snappy-go packages for drones and robots, has official ROS support, supports automatic launching of mavros bridges over WiFi, Telemetry, or USB, and supports different flight modes.

Check out the video of the Erle-Copter Drone in action below.

You can visit Erle Robotics website to know more about the drone.

Also Read: Meet ‘SKEYE’ the ‘world’s smallest’ drone that can easily fit in a matchbox