Erle Robotics launched the first Ubuntu drone

May 4, 2015 04:20 GMT  ·  By

After introducing the Erle-Copter drone powered by Ubuntu Snappy Core back in February 2015, Erle Robotics, a Spanish company known for all sorts of Linux-powered robots, launched on May 3 the world’s first Ubuntu-powered drone.

Powered by Snappy Ubuntu Core and the ROS framework, Erle-Copter is a great-looking drone that has a flight time of approximately 20 minutes, and it is built to support a payload of up to 2 kg. The quadcopter drone can be used to capture incredible scenes if you have a great camera, of course.

"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)

Regarding some technical specifications of the Erle-Copter drone, we can mention that it comes with APM Copter and Plane pre-installed as applications, support for utilizing either the 2.4 or 5 GHz frequency bands for Wi-Fi, and 536 MB of free space for custom data.

The quadcopter drone is ideal for various outdoor operations, 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.

As far as the price goes, we can tell you that the Erle-Copter Ubuntu Core special edition drone costs €399 ($455) for the very basic version, which won’t fly. Therefore, if you want to buy an Erle-Copter that flies and has the basic components, you will have to pay at least €574 ($640).

You can start customizing your Erle-Copter Ubuntu Core special edition drone right now. To see the quadcopter in action, do not hesitate to check out the video below. More information about Erle-Copter can be found on its official website.