Controlling an AR Drone quadrocopter with an Epson Moverio BT-100 head-mounted display

Epson’s Moverio BT-100 media viewer may not be particularly stylish, but the development community is showing that it has a few more uses than just watching movies on giant simulated screens. For instance, 16-year old hacker and programmer Thomas Sohmers is working on a project that lets you control a Parrot AR Drone quadrocopter using the head-mounted display and its handheld controller. Sohmers’ app connects to the Parrot through Wi-Fi, letting you both control its movement and see through its cameras. This means that you can look through the drone’s front-facing camera while flying, and then the bottom-facing one while landing, while still being able to view the copter itself. There’s still some work to do on the controls — right now you can only control the rotation and vertical movement — but cool applications like this at least provide an extra excuse to don the bulky BT-100.