Comment by David Kovar on December 27, 2011 at 8:38am

Greetings,

I live in Central Illinois and so am biased, but sUAVs can play a huge role in agriculture, even in developed countries with access to relatively low cost full size aircraft. There is an enormous amount of farmland out here that could be imaged and monitored much more cheaply with a sUAV.

As a transition point, a regulation allowing for sUAVs to be flow by licensed pilots in rural areas would allow some US investment and business development to get started. 

I quite agree - if we need to run a transponder and lights on a sUAV it will become prohibitively expensive for most applications.

-David

Comment by David Kovar on December 27, 2011 at 8:41am

Greetings,

Yes, us UAV nuts can put together a really nice system for far less than $10K, but it is a one off and the resulting system requires some difficult to acquire skills to maintain, thus preventing it from being a viable product for anyone other than someone willing and able to hack on it.

The additional cost of the Sensefly goes into making it end-user friendly for a non-UAV nut.

-David

Comment by Anish on December 27, 2011 at 9:14am

@david out of curiosity, would be keen understand the list of difficult to acquire skills, may be we could find friends/ collegues who have them and get them involved in UAV building :). Thus improving availability of skills to the community.

Comment by David Kovar on December 27, 2011 at 11:22am

@Anish

I have a computer science degree, spent 20 years doing IT support, am a rated pilot, and am pretty bright. What I really lack is the mechanical and electrical engineering skills to build a decent FPV/UAV system, even if someone hands me all the parts. My build quality sucks. And getting the build done right is probably the most important step as all the piloting and software tuning skills aren't helpful if the airframe is unstable, or there is a lot of interference, or the servo throws aren't equal, or ....

You hit the nail on the head - a good community or team makes a home built UAV solution much more viable.

-David

Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on December 28, 2011 at 6:13am

'For example a mapping project requires aerial data acquisition,
ground control surveys and data processing.
Of all of these steps the briefest is taking
the photos and with fairly low rates in
the developed world for hiring a full scale it is hard to justify a UAV.'
I am a developer of Pteryx system for mapping and I assure you taking the photos
the correct way is exactly you need very specific UAV. The process takes around 2h
per 9km2 and is the least predictable part of the job, requiring highest quality equipment.
Job processing can take days, but then you are working at clean office.The idea 'I just make a photo of that field' works for amateurs only above their own field.

'Ahh...... 10K for autonomous foam wing ?  Seriously? Us UAV nuts can do so much better for that price tag!'
No you can't. The guy that developed autopilot full time for Fly'nSense during 3 years of his PhD did notably better product than diydrones community during 3 years.
Just watch closely how integrated and ease to use it is, how many research application they implemented.
Ardupilot is nowhere near that quality and when it will be, F&S will be somewhere else. They are just better focused and regularly funded, swarm robotics is a way of hidden sponsoring clever people in reasonnably managed countries.

Comment by Dara Shayda on December 28, 2011 at 10:42pm

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-drones-for-profit-20111127,0,...  

I think as long as the schoolboy applications of spying on girls in the pool and chasing "bad guyz" are regurgitated in our heads the so called killer-apps will not be found. 

A terrific paradigm-shift of concepts for application are necessary to catapult the techs, here in this community, into a new realm of commercial viability.

As soon as I say drone or UAV people think about spying! It is an urban culture issue. Not a tech issue nor a pricing issue.

@Anish: Check out MIT's Media lab "autonomous agent" theories and applications that were conceptualized in 90s.

Comment by Dara Shayda on December 28, 2011 at 11:29pm

@Bosak: The guy that developed autopilot full time for Fly'nSense during 3 years of his PhD did notably better product than diydrones community during 3 years.

This aside being an exaggeration is also comparing apples to orages: I prefer the OPEN SOURCE techs here than the closed systems of these guys or any other company.

I prefer to use the products here though still not fully matured, but avoid proprietary hardware and software. The fact that the products here are somewhat 'raw' is great! Lots of room for variation and innovation. 

What you do not understand is the OPEN SOURCE concept propagated in this community, in the beginning it is slow (like pulling the string on a bow) but when the arrow is thrown, it flies high and goes far. 

I think the developers and techs here are superb, I believe they are about to change the world, I put my money where my mouth is for these techs than for some proprietary system that only benefits few rich VCs and bankers.

I did startups in Boston area in late mid 90s, and I tell you what is done here is grand, you need to put on your glasses and look under the hood. 

Dara

Comment by Anish on December 29, 2011 at 1:03am

@bosak thanks will do, have to admit never worked with or knew anyone from media labs. Knew/ worked with CSAIL or whatever the name of it is now ( folks who are at CS/math end of spectrum than arts)

@Dara I do admit to open nature of innovation. Have been around in open source pre kernel 1.0 release and having seen what has happened, have no doubts about success of open innovation. Unfortunately there are counter examples to it as well, I tend qoute "source fire" as I watched it very closely - a case of open source going closed. Then there are innumerable cases of open source projects dying out. The key ( heavy disclaimer :- afaik - this is my observation )for successful open source projects is a project leader who is respected in the developer community for technical expertise, with vision and good political skills ;).
I am sure there are many projects where a core of people would act as the leader. Or else someone from the developer community would step up to the plate and assume leadership.

What I am sure of is Chris has been around and has even watching trends and knows more than most of us ( defenitely more than me :)) about all this and would have a vision for diydrones.

@chris do u want to share a bit of ur vision with all of us. Without revealing too much, so that the nice surprises ( e.g. Like APM 2) still remain suprises...

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