Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Becomes First UAV To Cross Bosphorus Strait

It's not often that you hear about a device – what's essentially a high-powered toy – breaking records flying across international waters. That's what's happened this week, though, as Parrot engineers have successfully programmed their AR.Drone 2.0 to fly across the Bosphorus Straight in Turkey – that's more than a kilometer – with a single battery. This device was recently given a bit of a reboot with the release of a new "High Density Battery", so as you can guess, that's exactly what this unit was deployed with.

This trip across the water was not made with an iOS or Android device controlling it – not the whole way, anyway. While we've recently had a bit of a trip of our own flying the AR.Drone 2.0 with NVIDIA SHIELD, this trip was made with the Parrot Flight Recorder module and a pre-laid GPS track. The "pilot" of this drone actually ended up using a MacBook to lay out the flight plan for the drone.

This flight made the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 the first UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) to cross the Bosphorus straight in history. Have a peek at the video and see how simple the whole situation really turned out to be. When a UAV flies in a relatively straight line, there's nothing much to it, really.

Then take note that this session was also recorded with GPS coordinates at the same time as the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 flew with the Flight Recorder module. This Flight Recorder is also known as "your AR.Drone 2.0 black box" due to its ability to utilize GPS data to fly on its own and "return home" with ease. It plugs in to the AR.Drone 2.0 with a standard full-sized USB port – one you'll find on the AR.Drone 2.0 out of the box ready to connect to your various futuristic accessories.