I always try and bring our readers the most bizarre gadgets and gear I can find, and when it comes to Japanese goods, that’s really not a challenge. Though this isn’t exactly a household item (yet), this spherical flying machine – developed by the research division of the Japanese Ministry of Defense – may one day be floating around your home, offering useful advice, like The Oracle from Halo.
As you’ll see in just a moment, the speed and grace at which this things flies is really quite impressive. Seeing this zip around a home, or – perhaps more likely – a battlefield, at 60km/h would be absolutely terrifying. The only thing it needs now is a scowling, disapproving face painted on it. Enemy soldiers would flee in terror from that alone!
Japan’s Spherical Flying Machine
Designed and constructed using only run of the mill, store bought items (from what store, I can’t imagine), this flying machine costs only $1400 USD to produce. Now, think about that for just a moment here. If this hand-made unit costs so little, imagine how cheap a mass produced version would cost? I’m guessing not very much, and that paves the way for very interesting possibilities.
Military applications aside, imagine having a fleet of these equipped with high definition cameras on a movie set. Camera people would have an unparalleled ability to film movies exactly the way they want, without having to lug around heavy, corded equipment. Even in the home these would be useful, allowing people to record sloppy bedroom romps, or their drunken adventures. People often forget to take pictures or video when they’re having fun, and if these droids were given some intelligence, perhaps they could handle that task instead. It’s all very exciting if you ask me.
Unfortunately I don’t have any further information to give you, but I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot more about this soon – perhaps on the Japanese Ministry of Defense website. In fact, I would be genuinely surprised if a DIYer didn’t try and create their very own version of this amazing flying orb. Now that we know how inexpensive this is to create, and using only store bought items, it couldn’t be that difficult to make one of these, right?
