Zoran's Blog: DJI Phantom Quadcopter - Cool drone that can fly autonomously

One of the coolest things I have seen for a log time is the the DJI Phantom quadcopter, http://www.dji.com/product/phantom with autonomous flight capability.

The quadcopter drone has GPS, Magnetic Compass, Barometer, Accelerometer, and 3 axis gyro and the heart of the system is the DJI Naza IMU (Inertial Management Unit) CPU that controls flight. Everything is already assembled, programmed, and ready to fly.The Phantom also includes its own GoPro camera mount, which opens the door to a whole other aspect of R/C flying – aerial video!

GPS on a drone? What about it?
Take her out to a clean and open space (no buildings within 200m range), best with 180 degrees open sky, wait until she found all 7 satellites, now you can fly in GPS mode. What is GPS mode? Simply saying, she can hold in one position ( ~1 meter accuracy) and stay there forever, when you switch off transmitter, it comes back to where it take off, that's the power of GPS guidance. With GPS mode, you can shoot really cool video like professionals, really stable and vibration free, you can take her very high and scouting the neighborhood, taking stunning footage of tree tops and mountains.... this little white Phantom can do it with style, and super easy to operate! The best part is "Go home and Land", when you lost sight or messed up the Head and Tail of this baby, don't worry, simply shut off the transmitter, it will come back to where it lift off, this is called "Enhanced Fail Safe". Another sweet function is called the "Course Lock", when you are hovering the drone in normal 12 o'clock direction, you switch the drone to Course Lock mode, it will remember where you stand, no matter where the drone is pointing at, you can still control the drone just like standing behind it, that means you pull back the elevator stick, it will still come back to you. this is a good function for people who always mix up headings.

The DFI Phantom: