Shai Goitein’s smartphone-controlled paper airplane has raised the sky high sum of $1.1 million on Kickstarter!
We’ve all made a paper airplane at some time or another. Especially during those excruciatingly tedious double maths lessons at school. But New York aviator and industrial designer Shai Goitein of PowerUp Toys has taken the humble paper plane to a whole new level. These babies can REALLY fly… staying airborne for up to 10 minutes at a time, rather than the mere 10 seconds of an average paper aeroplain.
Goitein’s PowerUp 3.0 Paper Airplane, which turns your self-made paper airplane into a high-tech, smartphone-controlled flying machine, has already secured funding of over $1.1 million from nearly 20,000 investors on the popular Kickstarter inventions site. The original target to back this project was only $50,000.
“PowerUp Toys has introduced a new form of play by meshing origami classics with technology,” says Shai Goitein. “This time we took a big leap forward, by integrating state-of-the-art Bluetooth Smart technology into our PowerUp design. Now you can easily control a simple homemade paper airplane with your smartphone.”
High Flyer
The PowerUp 3.0 Paper Airplane comes with a crash-proof carbon fibre frame and will fly for up to 10 minutes on a single battery charge. The PowerUp app supports iPhone, iPad and Android mobile devices.
If the Kickstarter appeal can raise $2 million in funding, PowerUp Toys are even promising to add a video camera to mount on your paper plane – capable of taking videos and still images and save them to a SD memory card onboard the Smart Module.
A boring old lesson of maths will never be the same again.
Fly, My Pretties
Here’s what some of the paper airplane backers have been saying about this amazing project on Kickstarter –
“Very cool idea!” -Chad Burch
“This is awesome! My wife shared this onto my FB wall, full well knowing I’m a gadget freak and wouldn’t be able to resist!” -Eric C Smith
“It’s not even funny how amazing this project is.” -Maxx Cobb
“I hope you will be able to add a camera to the airplane, but it would also be awesome if it was possible to make a loop with the airplane.” -Rene S Jensen
“Congratulations Shai and team for reaching 1 million! Wow, what a great result and I hope it doubles!” -Rod
“Well done, this project is flying.” -Stephen Rowlatt
“Amazing project, purely amazing. Thank goodness for Kickstarter, what would we do without it? Suffer… yes, exactly. That’s what we’d do without Kickstarter.” -The Art Factory
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I remember I used to love making paper airplanes when I was a kid but they were always completely hopeless. This is such a cool idea.
Excellent! So going to give this a go, show the boys at work how its really done!
This is amazing! I really hope he manages to reach 2 million for this great invention. I know I’d buy one!
Well, I’ve seen you guys produce some cool flyers, but reading this blog demonstrates that with the right stock and a bit of imagination, you can take the humble paper airplane to a new level.
Just goes to show, it’s not where you take the idea from, it’s where you take it to.
Brilliant! Love it.
Ive always been rubbish at building paper planes – this one looks foolproof if I had the items you need to make it!