3D Robotics

Meet the Developers: Jason Short

Next up in our series is Jason Short, who is leading the ArduCopter 2 team.

 

Jason works right around the corner from me in San Francisco, so I see him often. When I walk into his company's reception area carrying a crazy robot multicopter, the receptionist nods knowingly and says "you must be looking for Jason." ;-)

 

Among the many cool things about Jason is that he's an ace at Flash programming. So if you were impressed by the interactive PID tuning demos in the manual, that's Jason!

 

Here he is, in his own words:

 

Name: Jason Short

 

Home: San Francisco's Duboce Triangle

 

Dev Team Role: Leads ArduCopter team

 

Day Job: I am a design director at Smart Design, know for creating OXO good grips line, Flip Video, and long list of other familiar products. I am an industrial designer turned interaction designer with 16 years experience consulting for consumer product and software companies. 


Other DIY Drones Contributions: Lead developer for Ardupilot 2.5-2.8, ArdupilotMega 1.0, ArduCopter 2.0, Xplane HIL

 

 

Background:  I purchased the Ardupilot while at Maker Faire had never actually installed the software. Instead I decided I try and re-write it from scratch to be a stabilizer and RTL system for my FPV plane. Pretty soon I had a full autopilot that could fly waypoints. Not well, but it worked. After posting my work to DIYDrones Chris asked me to help with the next gen of AP. I modified it, made it compatible with Happy's ground station and released it as Ardupilot 2.5.
As soon as the first IMU was developed, I started working with Doug on versions 2.6 and later. Doug's knowledge of flight theory gave me the confidence to keep pushing. Mike Smith's development expertise gave me enough coding advice to get myself out of almost any coding roadblock. 

 

About that time I developed the HIL for testing using a simple solution in Perl to connect to Xplane. We used the HIL to test the new flight modes and the APM mission scripting capabilities.

 

Ten months ago I had a kid and realized my days of testing at the airfield all weekend were over, so I switched to Arducopter. I flew the original code twice and then fell back into my old habit of writing my own version. This time I ported the APM code that we wrote last summer and plugged in Jose Julio's control laws and within a few weeks had a flying copter. This version was not meant to be a release, but a private build for me to learn with. Pretty soon I  had the framework for mission scripting, logging, HIL and Mavlink in place  so the team decided to make AC 2 with my personal code.

 

The last 4 months have been tuning and rework to get it flying well in all situations on a wide variety of platforms. 
I have to say, when I started with AC I had no clue what I was doing, nor did I fully understand the control laws. I'm still learning and trying new ideas and getting help from the team where I can. Unlike fixed wings, Quads can be extremely unforgiving platforms, which has proved to be incredibly challenging. But it's also been extremely satisfying. 

 

Personal history: I grew up the son of a HAM radio and home-brew computer dad in the 70's. I learned that world as a kid, then went to art school and promptly forgot it all. I graduated an industrial designer from University of Cincinnati and worked in Boston for 9 years doing product design. I transitioned to software while in Boston and decided to move to SF with my wife to be closer to the action in Silicon Valley. 

 

Other fun details: I used to be a BMX Freestyle rider, but I grew too tall to be any good (6'5") so I gave it up when I got to college. 

Interests: I'm very much interested in human perception, behavior and cognitive science which I use a lot in designing UI's. I'd love to get more into AI and robotics in general.

Views: 2136


Developer Comment by Andrew Tridgell on August 11, 2011 at 8:05pm

Jason was the person who introduced me to APM/ACM development after I got a quadcopter at the start of the year. He very patiently helped me through the early stages of learning how the development process works. He really done an amazing job on the ACM code, particularly in working with users to find out why their copters aren't behaving as expected and working out how to fix it. Thanks Jason!

 

Comment by estebanflyer on August 11, 2011 at 8:23pm

I would bike to San Fran from Toronto and invite you with a coffee (or a beer). thank you so much for your work.


Moderator Comment by Hai Tran on August 11, 2011 at 9:03pm

Great work on AC2 Jason.

Comment by emile on August 12, 2011 at 1:22am
Hey, Hi! Pleased to meet you!
Comment by malcolm churn on August 12, 2011 at 2:02am
Hi There, Thanks for your hard work on AC2.
Comment by DaveyWaveyBunsenBurner on August 12, 2011 at 4:58am

Mr Short, you're cool!

 


Developer Comment by Mark Colwell on August 12, 2011 at 5:13am

AC2 Rocks! Thanks for all your efforts, I will soon fly my Swift 550 with OSD too, Please try to keep ACM small enough to run on AT1280. You have done a fine job.

I took my kids to flying field at all ages. Mom would play with them, until I launched a glider or rocket, Then we all would retrieve the craft. Sometimes rockets were found on a later visit. It was great fun! Best flying days were in spring when poppy fields were blooming! Keep up the great work!

Comment by avionics on August 12, 2011 at 6:10am

Thank you Jason for the amazing work you have done for this community, simply thank you for the novel approach !.

 

Comment by Jeff E on August 12, 2011 at 6:23am

Great finally new something about "The Man"

Comment by Heino R. Pull on August 12, 2011 at 6:34am
Thanks Jason!

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Season Two of the Trust Time Trial (T3) Contest has now begun. The fourth round is an accuracy round for multicopters, which requires contestants to fly a cube. The deadline is April 14th.

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