After some time following conversations here, I finally decided to introduce Erle, the educational drone:
About
For the last years I've been working in the robotics field, particularly with drones and after some time in several Universities and research centers I found many people (with much passion but) having trouble when it came to get started with them. Technology seemed in most of the cases a black box. Not meant to be used for learning or research. The software they use is in many cases unknown (obviously not in the ardupilot case which is one of the cores of our robot), closed source or not well documented. Given these conditions, how are we going to educate the next generations on this flying technologies? How do you get started programming drones if you don't have $1000+ budget? Which platform allows me to get started with drones without risking a hand?
I wanted to address all these questions so about a year and half ago, from South Korea, I assembled a team and we launched a project called Erle ("bee" in basque language).
Technology
Erle is a small size, low cost personal drone. Inspired by the BeagleBone development board (a credit-card sized computer), we have designed completely from 0 a small sized flying robot with about 40 sensors, plenty of I/O and processing power for real-time analysis. All of it in a small size Linux flying computer that will bringing robotics to the people. Some of the features we provide are:
- Linux OS (Ubuntu, Debian, Android, ...)
- ROS
- Ardupilot for Linux (work in progress)
- 40 sensors
- microSD card storage
- GPS
- host USB (WiFi dongles, Bluetooth dongles, Monitors, keyboards, ...)
- 92 pins for connecting other devices
- 20 minutes of battery
- Wireless charging (work in progress)
Definitely, we love ardupilot and we are collaborating in the future of it (through the BeaglePilot project) giving Linux computers such as Erle the ability to fly around.
Next steps
We truly believe that drones are about to change our lives (check our 60 seconds pitch) so our mission is to bring robotics to the people with our educational drone. To fulfill this mission we recently started putting up a set of tutorials through the Erle Robotics GitBook, an online resource that will serve as learning and teaching material.
Soon we hope launch a crowdfunding campaign that will allow everyone to access our technology :).
Finally, we are really excited and happy to share that we have recently been selected as one of the 30 top robotics startups worldwide. We will be pushing our educational drone as high as possible and for that purpose i'd like to invite everyone to share your thoughts about our technology.
Thanks in advance!
Comments
@johnkowalsky I'm afraid I'm not an expert in FPV.
Regarding Erle, i can tell you that we're focusing ourselves on using interoperable technologies. For now we're using links through WiFi and Bluetooth (USB dongles).
I like it!
Just out of curiosity. Do you guys think that in the future we'll get rid of traditional RC transmiters on 2.4ghz and control the plane through telemetry only ?? If you think of FPV and various problems with frequencies and most people invest in UHF systems at some point. Well wouldn't it be more practical to just use telemetry instead of traditional RC RF equipment ? What's your opinion on this ?
Thanks for your words Hugues!
On the business side, we don't mean to compete so much in price with existing products but in capabilities focusing ourselves in the educational market and providing outstanding resources for it.
Furthermore, we will provide an integrated (single PCB design), secure (as harmless as possible), light (current prototype about 160 grams, extended battery life), and scalable (Linux-based, integration with ROS, KnowRob, RoboEarth, etc.) solution. I would also point out that our robot includes many more sensors than most of the products listed (about 40 of them, much redundancy included) allowing many new applications (e.g. new control strategies).
Drones will indeed change our future and we strongly believe that our proposal will lead to a faster spread, usage and understanding of drones.
+1 for the initiative. Hope this will grow!
What will be your differentiators though versus a plethora of existing similar platforms (SW+HW+sensors) in more or less the same price range and that are opensource (cf http://multicopter.org/wiki/Multicopter_Table) ? (I hope it is not because it will run on Linux). You probably got his question already from potential investors, right ?
produce*
Iot, thanks for the encouraging.
The hardware will also be open.
Regarding the price, it will depend much on the number of units we produced but we're hoping to release it for something between 300 and 500 €.
I hope your project works well.
I have some questions, you say that it's low cost, so what price are you planning?
Is open source only the software (BeaglePilot) or the hardware too?
Victor, now that I see the circular enclosure in the video that you just posted, I should add "safer". I am hoping that some of those future engineers (and future systems architects) will contribute to improving the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge, and apply that knowledge for safer systems that include robotic vehicles, especially aerial vehicles. Some time when you come up for air, maybe I can help.
That's exactly our line John.
We've recently been at RoboCup Junior 2014 in Italy and we were really amazed by the ideas that all these future engineers had. Really exciting!
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