Teal on Wednesday introduced what it billed as the world's fastest production drone. Aside from its drone's capabilities, the company is drawing attention because George Matus Jr., its founder and CEO, is an 18-year-old recent high school graduate.
The drone can fly at 70 mph in all weather conditions and has reached a top speed of 85 mph in favorable conditions. It can withstand 40 mph winds, is built to run apps, and can be controlled using a smartphone, tablet or hobby controller. It comes with a one-year warranty.
Pricing and Purchasing
Teal is taking preorders for the US$1,300 drone.
Buyers will get the drone, two high-performance flight batteries, a charger, two sets of propellers, expansion cables and some surprises.
The first 500 orders will get the Signature Series, which adds an Endurance Package that doubles the drone's 10-minute flight time.
Software Lineup
The Teal drone uses the Teal OS, which is written in C.
It will be offered with an SDK and APIs, and "we'll be building out apps in the fall before we start shipping," Matus said.
The main control application for the Teal drone is a command-and-control app. Teal and Neurala are codeveloping a Follow Me app that employs image recognition algorithms used by NASA and the U.S. Air Force. It will let the drone follow a person or object using real-time object recognition.
However, "I don't see a huge need for users to run apps on drones," commented Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
"Most people just want the thing to be easy to use and not crash," he told TechNewsWorld.
Making drones that work like PCs "increases the risk of viruses and rogue drones, and you introduce unreliability," Enderle said.
No comments
Post a Comment