Very imaginative use for a Pi

Seen that done already. Gyros plus GPS is all you need to send a model a few miles and then return.

Or in one case, a few miles and then be landed by a pilot in a car randomly chasing it down lanes..

Indeed, but its the autonomous waypoint flying and the image analysis that makes this rather cute... Self landing is also quite nifty.

Was there not a plan for using an I phone for this?

This seems a lot cheaper. Brian

Your perhaps thinking of multicoptor, a.r. drone, parrot type multi rotor helicopter type things.

_____________________________________

e80$agf$ snipped-for-privacy@news.albasani.net...

Plenty of things out there will let you fly them by remote control using a smart phone... this application is rather different in that it does all its own flying - you just plan where you want it to look. Much more like some military drones in that respect.

The first 5 min of a film I first saw in boarding school when I was 7

There is open source software and hardware for multicopters that does automated flights. I suspect some of the military drones use the software.