X

Game of Drones: where UAVs meet paintball

The team of drone enthusiasts at Game of Drones has rigged up drones with paintball guns for a game of remote aerial combat.

Michelle Starr Science editor
Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get you as enthralled with the wonders of the universe as she is. When she's not daydreaming about flying through space, she's daydreaming about bats.
Michelle Starr

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

The team of drone enthusiasts at Game of Drones has rigged up drones with paintball guns for a game of remote aerial combat.

Mucking around with monarchical politics and swords is all well and good, but a remote-controlled toy drone involves around 98 per cent less decapitation and at least 54 per cent more fun. At least, we assume that's part of the reasoning behind Game of Drones, a collective of artists, inventors, robot builders, video producers and designers who modify drones for a bit of friendly competition.

In the past, the team has created an "unbreakable" drone and a teeny-tiny drone fitted with a rocket launcher. But the most recent drone allows its pilot to play paintball — via remote control.

Using a commercial six-rotor drone, Marque Cornblatt and his team have mounted a GoPro camera so that the gunner can look down the barrel of the paintball gun in real time for accurate aiming. The gun itself is a Gog Envy, wired up to an air tank for firing, which is done remotely using a slot-car trigger remote. One person flies the drone, while the other fires the gun.

It took months of work to put it all together, balancing the weight so that the drone could fly, then working out the firing mechanism. See the finished beast in action in the video below.

Via boingboing.net