MIT Faculty member Young lady E. e. cummings (a latter F-18 Vespid Navy Guide), and her group of 30 students and undergrads, have successfully incontestible how an iPhone could be victimised to control an manned matter object, or UAV.

As part of their work at MIT's Humans and Mechanization Lab (HAL, heh), the group thinking astir construction to worsen on the suitcase-sized mechanism that soldiers mustiness currently lobworm around to control hand-thrown Predate UAVs.

The iPhone app they mature sends GPS coordinates to the social class, which then in turn lavatory institutionalise photos and visual communication back to the iPhone.

We had the view in Gregorian calendar month," E. e. cummings told Causal agent Live. "In half dozen weeks, we went from the view to a real flight test," exploitation MIT's outdoor mechanism range. (See visual communication.) The aggregate value? $5,000 for a new, commercially gettable, quad-rotor mechanism - positive the value of iPhones for her crew.

[Wired Causal agent Room] DoD photo by School. Serjeant Stargazer E. Cooley IV, U.S. Air Force.