Bart Remes wants you to have a personal drone in the pocket. Lisa/S brings this goal closer.

At 2×2 cm and just 2 grams, Lisa/S could well be the world’s smallest autopilot, except maybe the one from the Black Hornet (on which no details are currently available).

Lisa/S was created virtually from scratch by Bart Remes, project manager of the Micro Aerial Vehicle Lab at the Aerospace Engineering Faculty of the TuDelft, and it’s team.

Incidentally, these are the same guys that developed the Delfly II:

We read, from the original press release on Lisa/S:

 “We programmed new software, Superbitrf, that keeps the autopilot connected to a ground station and a normal RC transmitter at the same time.” This combination of functions made it possible to miniaturize the autopilot. Making the autopilot smaller and lighter allows a micro aerial vehicle to stay up in the air longer and carry heavier cameras and sensors. This makes it easier to use MAVs in for example search and rescue operations. ”

It is kind of funny to notice that apparently the frame on which Lisa/S is being tested is an Hobbyking PCB Micro Quad:

Interestingly, Lisa/S is being developed as an Open Source project so as to allow anyone to experiment and contribute to the project.

Remes: “Our aim is to make MAVs as commonplace as smartphones and laptops. Farmers can use MAVs to inspect crops for example. Our dream is that every fire fighter carries a MAV in his breast pocket to use for inspections of collapsed or burning buildings without having to go inside.”

Stay tuned on the Personal Drones Blog for the latests news on multirotor research!