"Hey Chris, This was actually part of my postdoc work at Duke after leaving Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab.  Here's a paper that describes the early system: http://people.ee.duke.edu/~sjt/assets/BIOCAS2012_Dragonfly.pdf For my…"

"Reminds me of some of the wireless recharging UAV's from Nebraska: http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/04/17/wireless-power-transfer-ground-sensors-using-uav-quadrotor"

"This is pretty cool.  There was some similar work a while back by robotics researchers using electric field sensing fish as the model.  Basically, the researchers built arrays of electric field sensors to do the same thing (ie.…"

"EP Magnets are AWESOME.  I wrote an extensive article about them over on Hizook a while back that explains the physics.  Go check it out:…"

"My guess: Selling into government bureaucracies is difficult and expensive.  So is offering quality support.  Perhaps they also burden some of the risks associated with flying.  Perhaps they went through the FCC…"

"If you're making any circuits out of copper tape, do yourself a HUGE favor: make sure to get conductive adhesive copper tape (I can't tell if the SparkFun product has conductive adhesive or not).  I spent 4 hours…"

"As many folks in the comments confirm, they're likely using an OptiTrack system.  These have become fairly popular in academia as a low-cost vicon alternative -- 1/5th to 1/10th the cost with respectable resolution and update rates. In…"

"Heh, am I the only one who thought the crane was extending out of the image (via the drone tail fin)?"

"FYI, this is the same principle as the Neato vacuum cleaner's ultra low-cost laser rangefinder:  http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/12/20/ultra-low-cost-laser-rangefinders-actualized-neato-robotics"

"Haha.  Chris, you already covered this on DIYdrones when we wrote about it on Hizook.  ;-)"

"Travis here -- one of the Hizook post authors, and a researcher in this field.   The key thing about wirelessly-powered sensors being queried by a UAV is that (1) the UAV can get to inaccessible locations that are normally tough to reach and…"

"Travis here (Hizook author).   @Chris, thanks for the kind words.  I'm glad to see that you still follow Hizook.  ;-)  While the robotics VC landscape is lacking, I'm really encouraged by bootstrapped outfits, like…"

"@Simone:  You can actually buy a decent motion tracking system (eg. Natural Point's OptiTrack) for under $10k these days. "

"Uh oh... that was already posted."

"To be clear... you're charging 40% markup, right?  Your margins are $28 / $98 => ~28.5%"

"Travis here (Hizook co-founder).  Thanks for the kind words, Chris!  The essay was written by Fred Nikgohar, the CEO of RoboDynamics -- the company that makes the TiLR telepresence robot.    The DIYdrones community can provide a…"