Control a Drone With a Hacked Power Glove

The Nintendo Power Glove was originally released in 1989, but unfortunately failed to live up to its hype. The unit featured traditional NES controller buttons on the forearm, which enabled players to perform various hand motions to control a character on-screen… or in computer engineering graduate Nolan Moore’s case, to pilot a drone.

According to his Hackaday project page, “The ultimate goal of the Power Glove UHID project is to revamp the 1989 Nintendo Power Glove with modern sensors and wireless communication, giving you the ability to use gesture and motion controls with almost anything you can think of, in style.”

Moore replaced the electronics inside his wearable device, allowing him to control a Parrot AR Drone 2.0 over Wi-Fi. The glove has an IMU to sense motion and flex sensors in the fingers. These sensors are monitored by a Teensy LC that wirelessly sends commands via an ESP8266 module.

As you can see in the video below, holding his hand flat puts the drone in hover mode, while a tilted fist dictates roll and pitch. Pointing up and down takes care of the altitude, and pointing forwards controls yaw.

[🙌 CNET]