MIT Pushes the Boundaries of Tiny Drones with a New Mini Flight Controller Chip

The word “drone” is pretty ambiguous, and it can mean anything from the huge plane-like Predators used by the military to the tiny…

Cameron Coward
6 years agoDrones

The word “drone” is pretty ambiguous, and it can mean anything from the huge plane-like Predators used by the military to the tiny quadcopters in the bargain bin at Kmart. The latter is what most people will have direct experience with, which is why their size and cost have both become so small. For less than $15, you can easily find a drone that fits in the palm of a child’s hand, which would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. But, researchers at MIT want to take that even further, and have created a truly tiny flight controller chip to make that possible.

The chip, called Navion, is the smallest of its kind at just 20 square millimeters. That’s small enough that you could fit four of them on a single US postage stamp. The team believes that the Navion chip could be used in “nanodrones” as small as your fingernail. It also consumes very little power — just 24 milliwatts — so it’s practical for drones that are too small for the heavy battery packs that are commonly found on hobby drones.

In addition to being tiny and light, Navion is also pretty powerful. It can take the inertial measurements that all drones need in order to fly stably, and also process camera images in real-time at 171 frames per second. The team hasn’t yet tested the chip in an actual drone, but they have previous experience with creating similar, but larger, chips for palm-size drones. They plan to first demonstrate Navion in a tiny race car, and then move on to flying drones.

Cameron Coward
Writer for Hackster News. Proud husband and dog dad. Maker and serial hobbyist.
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