Welcome to the Freedom Flies repository.  This is a reduced, static version of our internal development site.

Freedom Flies is an exploratory technology aimed at offering basic Unmanned Aerial Vehicle technology to the journalism and human rights NGO communities.  Typical UAVs cost on the order of $500,000 per system.  In contrast, ours is targeted at a few thousand, but more importantly it's open source.  Hardware, software, and fabrication techniques are easily reproduced.  Some information is online, more will follow in early 2006.

The unit itself is built from commonly available parts (a weed-eater engine, bicycle rim, water bottle, and kite-surfing kite), glides to the ground via a parachute in case of system failure, and travels quite slowly (30mph).  It can carry over 15 lbs, allowing it to lift video, gps units, pamphlets, water, food and other payloads.

This site is a reduced version of our development site for the project, in anticipation of our first release (we have to admit that we are still crashing quite often).  As a result, visitors will only be able to see a subset of the entire site.  We encourage you to come back, or email us at [uav (at) media dot mit dought eee dee u].

Here is a short video showing aerial footage from our system.

Also, see related links.