Pioneering micro-drone project might take to the skies after all

A FAILED multi-million-pound project which made headlines around the world has made a surprising comeback.

In 2015 more than 12,000 people gave a total of £2.3m to fund the Zano mini-drone, a scheme to create hand-held quadcopters. The project became Europe’s biggest campaign on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, but it imploded in 2015.

Now a group of developers are hard at work looking to revive the project using the original technology invented in south-west Wales.

London-based micro-drone manufacturer Extreme Fliers are now looking to take the project on after shelling out more than £100,000 to buy the assets of Zano’s original Swansea-based developer Torquing Group after it collapsed.

The Zano Camera project, now being showcased at the CES expo in Las Vegas, is one in a series of schemes being developed out of the failed crowdfunding campaign.

Extreme Fliers chief executive Vernon Kerswell said: “Zano was deeply flawed and there was a lot of issues with the software and the hardware, and that’s ultimately why they never shipped [en masse]. But a lot of the technology was very interesting and way ahead of what else was out there at the time.

“Drone companies out there would never risk putting unproven technologies in their flagship products. But we can use it as a platform to test new ideas and build a group of passionate developers.”

Work is being carried out to open-source the intellectual property involved in the Zano drones so enthusiasts worldwide can make them “undead”.

Mr Kerswell said: “There are about 1,000 units out there that shipped, but they were bricked when the company went bankrupt because the computer server that they were dependent on was switched off.”

If support is won for the not-forprofit venture, extra units could be manufactured in the future. But he said work would need to be carried out to stengthen the orignal hardware’s fragile design and improve the sensors.