Hacked Nintendo Power Glove can Control Drone

Back in 1989 Nintendo released the now infamous Power Glove. Great name and a great concept, but unfortunately only around 100,000 units sold in the US, and the two games that were specifically made for the new system barely left the shelves. It simply didn’t work and, in short, it was a huge commercial failure. But luckily computer engineering graduate Nolan Moore has taken it upon himself to restore the Power Glove to the glory that it never quite achieved.

That’s right. This particular Power Glove has been modified to control a quadcopter via WiFi. Gesture control is nothing new in the world of consumer drones, but that doesn’t make the above feat any less impressive. As well as bringing back the long forgotten Power Glove, Mr Moore has now opened the door to a new generation of pilots, able to now fly without fear of being brandished a nerd. Who, after all, is going to have a bad word to say about someone flying a drone with nothing but a futuristic glove?

To achieve the desired end result, much of the glove’s original electronics had to be replaced. You can find out more about the process on his Hackaday post. He wrote, “In a world… where wires are a thing of the past, pound signs are now hashtags and there is always a “new black,” one man will revive a gaming icon in order to preserve the past… and control the future.”

“The ultimate goal of the Power Glove UHID (Universal Human Interface Device) 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.”

Now, with simple hand movements, the drone be controlled to an impressive degree of precision. From what we can gather in the video above, making his hand flat tells the drone to hover. A tilted fist tells the drone to tilt and roll in the same direction. Simply pointing up and down appears to controls the altitude, while pointing forwards and tilting controls yaw.