Cleo, the donut-shaped tiny-drone

Drone Cleo. © Cleo Robotics.

Cleo Robotics has released a tiny, donut-shaped compact drone that can fit in the palm of your hand (it measures 95 mm in diameter, 33 mm thick, weighing 90 grams). It’s got a single pair of propellers on the same axis, housed inside a ring-shaped casing; it can fit in your pocket without having to be folded or taken apart, and there aren’t any fragile external parts that need to be protected. It works using a ducted fan. Changing the drone’s direction in flight relies on control surfaces into the airstream, something that company President Omar Eleryan, is saying very little about. The drone promises to be easy to use, practical and safe. Cleo should be available to the professional security market within the next 12 months, and the company hopes to launch a drone available to the public at a price competitive with other small quadcopters, between now and late 2019. That means you’ll need to be patient before you get a hold of one of these “dronuts.”

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, “Cleo Robotics demonstrates uniquely clever ducted fan drone.”