Star Wars Fan Builds ‘Return of the Jedi’ Speeder Bike Drone

With unmanned drones becoming more and more of a household item, it was only a matter of time before a Star Wars fan added a personal touch.

But it’s going to be tough to top Google engineer Adam Woodworth, who built his own Imperial speeder bike.

Woodworth modified a small quadcopter drone and affixed an Imperial trooper figurine to the craft, and as you can see in the video, he even mounted a camera on the toy pilot to capture some cool shots.

The inventor told Makezine he’s an avid fan of remote-controlled helicopter racing, but he got involved in the sport because of that famous scene from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

"“This project was an obvious choice to combine my interest and experience in RC (remote control) flight with my love of Star Wars stuff. I like always having some strange project on the work bench and this one was next in line, and attempt to build a version of the Imperial Speeder Bikes from the movie that I could ‘get into’ and fly around myself.”"

Later in the post, Woodworth goes into extensive detail on exactly how he designed the bike. The most interesting part is the challenge of mounting a rider onto the vehicle, which posed its own set of obstacles.

Woodworth isn’t the first engineer, though, to take inspiration from the saga. A couple of suspected Rebels actually built a drone based on the Millennium Falcon that took the Internet by storm earlier this year.

They even added an intense white beam to the back for authenticity, That’s some incredible attention to detail.

What’s the next Star Wars ship to get the DIY treatment? I’m hoping for someone to build a replica model of Boba Fett’s ship, Slave I. But then the bounty hunter might come after them for copyright infringement.

Next: More Details on Daisy Ridley's Role in The Force Awakens