Israeli start-up offers your own disposable drone

PowerUp 3.0 makes any paper plane electric-powered and smartphone controlled.

Before the smartphone generation, children would play outside whenever they could, and entertain themselves in every possible way, whether playing football or hide-and seek, skipping, or flying kites. One amusement was to make paper planes and fly them in open spaces, or even in enclosed ones. For a young child it was fun, but the plane would stay airborne only for a few seconds before hitting the ground.

For Shai Goitein, this was not enough, so he developed a special miniature motor that can be mounted on any paper airplane. In PowerUp 3.0, the motor is chargeable via a micro-USB connection, which helps the plane stay airborne for a long time, and you can control the plane using a smartphone.

To fly the plane, Goitein developed an app that looks a little like a computer flight simulator. It allows easy and convenient control of the plane, and provides real-time information on direction, height, battery level, range, and more.

Goitein posted PowerUp 3.0 on US crowdfunding siteKickStarter at the beginning of the week, with a fund-raising target of $50,000, but he surpassed that within 24 hours. The amount raised currently stands at $157 thousand from nearly 3,000 backers, and there are still nearly two months to go before funding closes. The full kit costs $40 on the funding page, with delivery scheduled for May 2014.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 28, 2013

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2013

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