Gesture-control glove makes drone flying a child's play

While companies like Microsoft and Sony work to perfect gesture controls for virtual reality, there is one segment of the population for which the technology might already be mature enough: children. A new drone called Aura from KD Interactive uses a glove controller to allow kids to use hand gestures to guide the UAV, making it roll and climb walls in addition to flying. The rolling comes courtesy of a spherical around the drone, which also protects the vehicle when it crashes inevitably from having a child pilot.

"With Aura, we're removing the boundaries of a traditional joystick controller, giving kids an innovative and super cool way to play and ensuring they have a successful first flight right out of the box," said KD Group strategic director Eric Levin. While more traditional drone controllers are still necessary in other settings, especially among professionals, the untested glove controller seems perfect for kids.

The glove works using technology from LocoRobo referred to as Gesturebotics. KD Interactive said this technology has only been used for military applications before and never consumer devices. If this kind of technology was adopted by any military, it probably didn't have the same limitations. KD Interactive said the Aura has "height and distance limitations," but didn’t specify what they are. At initial takeoff, Aura hovers 4 feet off the ground.

Fingerprint and iris scanning might be only the beginning, though. Right now those are the most mature forms of biometric security, but Microsoft has shown with Windows Hello that facial recognition has become very accurate, as well.

This is clearly a product aimed at children, but the cool factor could be enough of a hook. The Aura will go on sale in the fall for $100.