Comment by Javio on December 26, 2011 at 11:04am

If you don´t see the sky plenty of fliying sensors, that means the business is in its alpha step.

Comment by Paul Marsh on December 26, 2011 at 1:22pm

History repeats itself.  America had little interest in turbine engines or rockets while Germany surged ahead.

Comment by MarcS on December 26, 2011 at 2:19pm

I think we know the problems of using sUAS commercially...

Usability (regulations), reliability/robustness/ease of use, and finally, the price!!  The cost of the end product (in this case 3D data) has to be 1.lower then the benefit and 2.cheaper then competitors (e.g. manned AC).

Combined this is true for a very limited number of civil applications right now. So most things we see is research, because there the benefits of using UAS are much bigger.

In fact we need new ideas for applications that can only be done with UAS and everybody wants it :-)

Comment by David Kovar on December 26, 2011 at 3:09pm

Greetings,

In the US, price is not the problem, it is regulation. There are plenty of entrepreneurs and established business that would invest in sUAS in a heartbeat if there was profit to be made. But there is little point in investing $10K - $50K if you'll only be able to use the aircraft as a toy.

There are more enough existing applications for sUAS to justify new, more flexible regulations. Just look to Canada and Australia for examples.

-David

Comment by Garry Qualls on December 26, 2011 at 4:23pm

I like how they shake them to activate them... I'll be surprised if the Ardupilot doesn't have the multi-vehicle coordination abilities shown in that video in its standard code base this time next year.

Comment by Anish on December 26, 2011 at 5:32pm

afaik, ( read huge disclaimer :- all my understanding is theortical) from what i gather this should be achievable on APM once we progress a bit more. I guess challenge would be having enough of power on CPU to spare to do all the extra computation needed to do flock guidance. BTW does anyone know is this a sort of mesh network (robust) that is being used to communicate between these nodes ?

Comment by Mike on December 26, 2011 at 10:55pm

MarcS I agree. 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. In the developing world though where light aircraft are less available and where projects with no commercial gain (eg water resources vs oil & gas) then they are ideal.

Comment by RoboCopter on December 27, 2011 at 12:47am

Ahh...... 10K for autonomous foam wing ?  Seriously? Us UAV nuts can do so much better for that price tag!

Comment by MarcS on December 27, 2011 at 2:19am

@David, the problem is that we are still talking about toys... If the demand is that the systems fulfil aeronautic requirements, we are no longer talking about 10k for a system. Regulations are not based on the applications but on safety (ok, they should be :-), so I can see the argument for line of sight, and that is and will be the most limiting factor.  And please tell me the commercialy succesful applications in Canada and Australia. In Europe what I see is still 90% science...

@Robo: Yes, and that is not one of the expensive ones. You just have to calculate for the cost of an engeneering team and the low number in sales. Of course "we" can also built autonomous planes, but if you want to start to sell AND live of that, do the calculation. The customer wants a working product, so you have to do lots of testing... also time consuming and expensive.

And Mike, you are totally right. I just looked around for microlight planes because they are not really more expensive then a "good" UAS and much more versatile to use... Developing world is a good point, but also not from a commercial point of view, since there is no money to earn.

My conclusion: We still need to find THE application that justifies intense use of UAS...

Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on December 27, 2011 at 2:50am

I agree Marc, I don't think the person that knows the killer app has bumped into sUAS at the minute. But they will soon and we will all say oh of course!

There are some large scale agriculture UAS trials going on in the UK. The operator is CAA licenced and able to fly BLOS. So also is another chap doing coastal flights. 

You can grab lots of data from LOS though. Turning the collect into something meaningful is where the work is.

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