'Feel' your drone with MotionPilot's haptic joystick

Flying a drone isn't as easy as it looks, as any beginner who has ever purchased one of the pricey things and then immediately crashed it can attest. A startup called MotionPilot wants to help beginners and pros alike with a joystick that makes it more intuitive and tactile at the same time. The device, still in a prototype stage, has motion sensors that let you maneuver a drone just by rotating and tilting your hand, while haptics let you feel it turn and accelerate. MotionPilot, founded by four grad students from France's École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL), says the joystick's hand gesture control are so intuitive that beginning pilots can learn to fly "in a few seconds." To maneuver, you just lean the device forward or sideways, while using a trigger to change altitude.