Making Drones Easy–and Fun

Archive this series
Would you believe there's a drone you can program to fly, in about ten minutes? Meet the "CoDrone". This is a new robotics kit, created by San Diego-based robotics "edutainment" company Robolink, Inc. And we're excited for Robolink CEO Hansol Hong and his crew! We caught up with them at CES 2016, in Las Vegas, after their new "CoDrone" kit won a finalist award in this year's "Last Gadget Standing" competition. We'd had the opportunity to talk with Hansol (who is also the organizer of the San Diego Robotics Club) after he displayed his 12-in-1 robot kit, "Rokit Smart" at the Orange County Mini Maker Faire, in Irvine. At that point, in May, 2015, "Rokit Smart" had just launched a Kickstarter campaign. They funded successfully, raising more than $52,000 and delivering the new product by October of that year to backers. The "CoDrone", Robolink's second Kickstarter campaign, has now raised more than $200,000 in funding. Robolink is currently in the process of producing and packaging this new kit, for delivery to more than a thousand backers. Meanwhile, Hansol and his Robolink team are still developing all kinds of cool robotics, as they teach students (and us "big kids" how to build and program robots. During CES 2016, Hansol talked about developing the CoDrone, the resources he had found most helpful and the process of learning robotics. In this episode of Over Coffee®, you'll hear: How the first-of-its-kind CoDrone teaches drone programming; Robolink's additional offerings, in robotic kits; Why Hansol feels someone will never be a "robotics expert"--and why he finds that an exciting aspect of his field; Why Hansol and his team decided to create a drone kit; The resources Hansol recommends, for anyone who'd like to get further involved in robotics.

146 episodes available. A new episode about every 7 days averaging 19 mins duration .