Is it a quadcopter? A plane?  No, it’s both! [Daniel Lubrich] is at it again with a vertical take off and landing transformer he calls the SkyProwler. We’ve covered some of his work before where his team designed a UAV called ATMOS for a DARPA competition.

The SkyProwler uses a switch blade type mechanism to move from quadcopter mode to plane mode. The wings can be detached to make it a normal quad that has all the typical bells and whistles. It can follow you around with GPS, fly autonomously via way points, and has this cool gimbal mechanism that keeps the GoPro stable as the drone pitches in flight, allowing for a better video experience.

[Dan’s] ultimate goal is a full size passenger model called the SkyCruiser, which uses the same switchblade transformation mechanism as his much smaller SkyProwler. Be sure to check out the video below if you haven’t already, and let us know of any quadcopter / plane hybrids of your own.

source:

http://hackaday.com/2015/02/15/quadcopter-plane-transformer-is-awesome/ ;

If (3dprinter == true) { print = http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:593132} ;)

But for real, there is a clone of DJI Inspired on Thingiverse, so if you happen to have a 3d printer, you could make yourself a cheaper version of this cool craft. 

some guys are selling .stl files for £5 (about $7.69) @ http://www.rchobbysuk.co.uk/store/p127/DJI_Inspired_%283D_Printable_Quad%29_STL_FILES.html

I see some folks already made their clones, and they look ok, not sure how they fly though... 

Anyone interested in printing it?

more:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:593132

http://www.rchobbysuk.co.uk/store/p127/DJI_Inspired_%283D_Printable_Quad%29_STL_FILES.html

Cemeteries use paper and old school spreadsheets to manage their land and know where to dig. But these outdated systems can lead to errors and expensive lawsuits when graves are dug in the wrong place and someone’s Rest In Peace is disturbed. PlotBox offers a SAAS for cemeteries and crematoria that helps them manage their land and bookings. The startup can use drones to quickly scan cemeteries for free plots much faster than traditional methods. It scanned a 50 acre cemetery via drone in 30 minutes when it would have taken 100 hours normally. PlotBox has $280,000 in closed sales already, and is hoping to kill the old cemetery management systems to bring technology to a $3 billion US market.

source:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/04/niche-to-win/

Plotbox website:

http://plotbox.io

video link:

http://youtu.be/pEHXDaxDr3Q

So apparently, PKP - Polish Railways are testing drones to capture coal thieves. It's hard to believe, that they captured an actual footage of steeling during the tests, looks more like PR move, but that's what they say. PKP claim to have plans of implementing the system for automated drone patrolling in near future.  

I think they could use some zoom gimbal camera ;)

A few years ago, Ludovic Daler showed us a flying robot that he was working on that had the ability to “walk” by rotating its wings while on the ground. We love seeing designs like this that are completely, utterly out of the box, and Ludovic promised even more: 

We aim to make adaptive deployable wings... their shape could be adaptively modified to augment efficiency of forward flight, hover flight, and displacement on the ground.

With a little bit of inspiration from the common vampire bat (!), Ludovic has delivered with this updated robot that keeps its walking ability and now includes a foldable skeleton mechanism that lets it deploy and retract its wings.

The robot is called DALER (Deployable Air-Land Exploration Robot), and I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Ludovic Daler is the lead author on a paper that’s just been published in Bionspiration & Biomimetics. The focus of the paper is, of course, the robot’s adaptive wings, which enable ground locomotion without sacrificing much weight or structural efficiency, since the rotating wingtips double as an attitude control system when the robot is in the air. The foldable wings (studying the bats helped out here) help to increase walking efficiency on the ground, and also allow the robot to squeeze into places that it might not otherwise be able to reach.

It’s obvious that DALER is, um, not the most graceful of robots when it’s stuck on the ground, but there’s a huge difference between the zero ground mobility that most aerial robots have and some ground mobility, however limited. For what it’s worth, bats operate the same way. In the air, DALER can reach 20 m/s, while on the ground, it tops out at 6 cm/s. It’s not going to get very far at 6 cm/s, but in a search and rescue scenario, the ability to move on the ground at all means that it can land and scramble around a little bit, maybe moving underneath obstructions to investigate areas that are otherwise inaccessible from the air.

The other appeal of ground mobility is that it gives a winged robot the capability to land, reorient itself, and then take off again. Rotary winged aircraft can do this, but they’re substantially less efficient over long distances. When a winged robot comes in for an autonomous landing, it’s usually better described as a controlled crash, and taking off without some form of assistance is usually impossible. DALER shouldn’t have this problem, and that’s where the research is heading next, according to EPFL:

Future development of the DALER will include the possibility to hover and to take off autonomously from the ground in order to allow the robot to return to the air and come back to base after the mission.

source:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/flying-walking-vampire-bat-robot-is-back

http://lis.epfl.ch/DALER

http://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-flying-robot-that-can-walk-4/

Its very early to judge, whether Microsoft Hololens is going to be a good product, but from what i see it could be the ultimate FPV solution. Just imagine Telemetry, video screen and a natural view of the drone all on a holographic, augmented reality glasses. The setup should also be fast, because its Windows! Just setup APMplanner and a screen from light bridge and you are ready to go. No laptops or tablets, no fpv monitors, just your goggles and a radio in hands. I think we might see some review of that setup in the next several months.

Here's an article:

Microsoft's HoloLens headset is a holographic display for Windows 10

Microsoft is building support for holographic displays into Windows 10, so it only makes sense that the company would make one of those displays, wouldn't it? Meet HoloLens, an official headset with see-through lenses that merges digital content with the physical. It includes spatial sound so that you can hear things happening behind you in the virtual world, and it even has a dedicated Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) to make sure everything works smoothly. The company is shy about just when it'll start selling HoloLens, but it should be available "in the Windows 10 time frame."

source:

http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/21/microsofts-hololens-headset-gives-your-windows-10-pc-a-holograp/

You might have seen this video before. Recently there's been some rumours about IMU issues of the new DJI drone Inspire.

The company just confirmed the issue, and they are fixing it in a hurry. It might never happened, if it was an open source software ;), just saying.

Don't Trust Your Expensive Autonomous Drone to Always Be Autonomous 

Everybody is super excited about affordable, portable autonomous drones this year. Well, affordable might be stretch. The badass new DJI Inspire costs $2,900, but it can fly around shooting video in 4K without any help. One problem: A bug in the firmware is making Inspire drift randomly—and crash.

Just ask Mark Taylor. The experienced drone pilot recently bought DJI's expensive new masterpiece and was excited to use the drone's auto-takeoff feature to "do a house fly-by for real estate." (This is potentially illegal, but we won't tell.) After experiencing some "shimming and drifting," Taylor decided to film a flight so that he could send the feedback to DJI. "This happened with no operator input just in auto take off mode," he said in the video's YouTube description. What happened? The flying robot almost took out his wife!

In an email to Gizmodo, DJI confirmed that there was an issue with the Inspire's firmware. (We can only assume that this dangerous random drifting is related.) The company said that its "product support team has noted the issue and is currently taking care of it." A fix is due to be released in the next 24 to 36 hours.

Nevertheless, Mark Taylor's scary video is a great reason not to trust your supposedly autonomous drone. We've already seen how problematic human drone pilots can be—and more problems are surely to come. We've also had our own problems with DJI's earlier autonomous flight features in the past. 

Your very expensive new toy may say it can fly itself, but do steer clear of those propellors. You never know when your drone will get a mind of its own. [YouTube via Daily Dot]

 

MORE:

http://gizmodo.com/dont-trust-your-expensive-autonomous-drone-to-always-be-1679451438

When I first saw Dji Inspire, i was really impressed, I'm sure, just like the rest of you guys. It's really something new, with cool and smart design, really inspiring. The Dji's design is a separate subject, it's something worth analysing.

But today i wanted to turn your attention to something less technical. Im thinking about the name of the drone - "Inspire".

After the exciting hours of first impressions of Inspire, trying to catch the details of the design, features, parameters, i realised that the name "Inspire" will in fact inspire a lot of companies to copy the design. The name is almost like an invitation to coping it. 

So we didn't have to wait long to see inspired designs. Walkera is showing their APM-powered H6 at CES 2015, which looks a lot like Dji newest drone. 

www.youtube.com/embed/DPufN3Pk3Dc

As we know, Dji patented moving arms, so they could also be used as landing gear. So Walkera made unmovable arms, and retractable landing gear fixed to the centre plate. But the rest is very similar.

The rest is unknown, but if the price is right, i mean more reasonable than Dji Inspire, and APM is controlling the drone it may be some alternative. 

So it appears that people want cool looking drones. Will we see a burst of original designs? Is 3DR building their own "Inspired" drone? Hopefully! :) 

Someone flew on the football field with a DJI Phantom, with a national flag attached to it. One of the footballers managed to catch the flag. Take a look at the situation. What do you think about it? Will it have an impact on our community?

Helibaits HB06 is possibly the first drone designed to cary bait and unload it in a specified area. Fisher man all over the world may benefit from this concept. Simple but useful.

This could be nice upgrade of hobby, even if you don't catch any fish, you can always check the area, or make a nice movie.

Some FPV addicted drone pilots are racing their drones in the woods in France

This is a pre event that happend in france, organized by airgonay, a quadcopter racing fanatic association. Drones are not only for spying or doing the headlines when they fall in the streets. 
Follow us on facebook: www.facebook.com/airgonay

Looks like fun! 

A staggering fact is that motors and motor driven systems account for between 43 percent and 46 percent of all global electricity consumption. Needless to say, if electric motors could be made to  run more efficiently, energy consumption would fall. With research out of Rice University back in 2011 demonstrating that carbon nanotubes braided into wires could outperform copper in conducting electricity, it looked like there would soon be a new way to create those improved efficiencies.

Building on that research, a team at the Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) in Finland hasreplaced the copper windings used to conduct electricity in electric motors with a woven material made from threads of carbon nanotubes and achieved remarkable new efficiencies in the motors.

"If we keep the electrical machine design parameters unchanged and only replace copper with future carbon nanotube wires, it is possible to reduce the Joule losses in the windings to half of the present-day machine losses,” said Professor Juha Pyrhönen, who has led the design of the prototype at LUT, in a press release.

Copper windings have traditionally been used because they are the second best metal at conducting electricity at room temperature, and they come relatively cheap. However, despite their high conductivity, they do offer some resistance—to the point where Joule losses are often referred to as “copper losses.”

Meanwhile carbon nanotubes have conductivity far beyond the best metals and their limits of conductivity have not been found: some have been measured at 100 millisiemens/meter, compared to ultra-pure copper at 58.65 MS/m. With this kind of conductivity, carbon nanotube-based windings could result in double the conductivity of today’s copper windings, according to the Finnish researchers. And as Pyrhönen claimed, Joule losses could be cut in half with the carbon nanotube yarn.

In the prototype motor made by the Finnish team, the carbon nanotube yarns are spun and converted into an isolated tape by a Japanese-Dutch company Teijin Aramid. (The actual spinning technology was developed in collaboration with Rice University.)  Since this industrial use of the carbon nanotube yarn is still at its early stages, the production capacity has not been ramped up. This will have to be addressed if the new wire is to replace the ubiquitous copper windings.

However, the performance improvements are significant enough to warrant at least an investigation into whether it can become a realistic replacement for copper wiring.

"There is a significant improvement potential in the electrical machines, but we are now facing the limits of material physics set by traditional winding materials,” said Dr. Marcin Otto, business development manager of Teijin Aramid, in the press release. “We expect that in the future, the conductivity of carbon nanotube yarns could be even three times the practical conductivity of copper in electrical machines. In addition, carbon is abundant while copper needs to be mined or recycled by heavy industrial processes."

Sounds as though there’s a company that has a firm belief in the potential of their product in this application. And with the potential to put a big dent in the 45 percent of global electricity consumption that comes from the use of electrical motors, why not be confident?

A video of the motor equipped with the carbon nanotube windings is below.

source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/carbon-nanotube-yarns-set-to-replace-copper-windings-in-electric-motors

...Study published last week in the Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, that describes an algorithm that can classify land cover types with minimal nudging from humans.

The problem, from a computational standpoint, is that hyperspectral sensors are too good at their jobs. Where most visual data assigns a single value (like color) to each pixel, hyperspectral data pixels each have hundreds, even thousands of values (see image to the left). Statistically, this makes each pixel seem unique to the computers tasked with classification. This is known as the Hughes effect, and it’s a huge problem because it cripples the potential of using hyperspectral data to rapidly update our knowledge about the condition of the earth’s surface.

Even if they can’t label the land cover types, hyperspectral imaging algorithms are usually able to put like pixels into groups based mostly on their proximity to one another. In the new study, the authors combined this clustering method with another technique that uses a small number of training samples to label each group of pixels.

more: 

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/science-graphic-of-the-week-algorithm-that-decodes-the-surface-of-the-earth/

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924271614002020

... this is how we would control our drones in the near future, if this promising object recognition technology from Google goes mainstream (and gets an API). I think drones and other mobile robots could benefit a lot. Check this out:

Automatic object recognition in images is currently tricky. Even if a computer has the help of smart algorithms and human assistants, it may not catch everything in a given scene. Google might change that soon, though; it just detailed a new detection system that can easily spot lots of objects in a scene, even if they're partly obscured. The key is a neural network that can rapidly refine the criteria it's looking for without requiring a lot of extra computing power. The result is a far deeper scanning system that can both identify more objects and make better guesses -- it can spot tons of items in a living room, including (according to Google's odd example) a flying cat. The technology is still young, but the internet giant sees its recognition breakthrough helping everything from image searches through to self-driving cars. Don't be surprised if it gets much easier to look for things online using only vaguest of terms.

more to read:

source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/08/google-details-object-recognition-tech/?ncid=rss_truncated

source: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2014/09/building-deeper-understanding-of-images.html

Always wanted to try some flying from a moving car, but never thought of driving a car with fpv goggles on, and watching the car form the air. :)

Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have developed a nanoporous material that has the energy density (the amount of energy stored per unit mass) of an electrochemical battery and the power density (the maximum amount of power that can be supplied per unit mass) of a supercapacitor. It's important to note that the energy storage device enabled by the material is not claimed to be either of these types of energy storage devices.

The research community has wearied of claims that some new nanomaterial enables a “supercapacitor," when in fact the energy storage device is not a supercapacitor at all, but a battery. However, in this case, the Rice University researchers, led by James Tour, who is known for having increased the storage capacity of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries with graphene, don’t make any claims that the device they created is a supercapacitor. Instead it is described as an electrochemical capacitor with nanoporous nickel-fluoride electrodes layered around a solid electrolyte that is flexible and relatively easy to scale up for manufacturing.

The issue of appropriate nomenclature aside, the reported performance figures for this energy storage material are very attractive. In the Journal of the American Chemical Society ("Flexible Three-Dimensional Nanoporous Metal-Based Energy Devices"),  the researchers report energy density of 384 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg), and power density of 112 kilowatts per kilogram (kW/kg).

To give some context to these numbers, a typical energy density for a Li-ion battery is 200Wh/kg, whereas commercially available supercapacitors store around 5- to 25 Wh/kg and research prototype supercapacitors have made claims of anywhere from 85 to 164 Wh/kg. In terms of power density, the numbers for the new nanoporous material is in line with those of supercapacitors, which range from 10 to 100 kW/kg—far higher than the 0.005 to 0.4kW/kg that batteries can deliver.

“The numbers are exceedingly high in the power that it can deliver, and it’s a very simple method to make high-powered systems,” Tour said in a press release. “We’re already talking with companies interested in commercializing this.”

To make the battery-supercapacitor hybrid, the Rice team deposited a nickel layer on a backing material. They then etched the nickel layer to create pores five nanometers in diameter. The result is high surface area for storing ions. After removing the backing, the nickel-based electrode material is wrapped around a solid electrolyte of potassium hyrodroxide in polyvinyl alcohol. In testing, the researchers found that there was no degradation of the pore structure after 10 000 charge-discharge cycles, or any significant degradation of the electrode-electrolyte interface.

“Compared with a lithium-ion device, the structure is quite simple and safe,” said Yang Yang, lead author of the paper, in the press release. “It behaves like a battery but the structure is that of a supercapacitor. If we use it as a supercapacitor, we can charge quickly at a high current rate and discharge it in a very short time. But for other applications, we find we can set it up to charge more slowly and to discharge slowly like a battery.”

With the device’s flexibility and high charge-up rate, it’s possible to imagine this storage device powering flexible mobile devices. However, charging rates for the battery/supercapacitor will be limited by the typical 200-amp 240V single-phase residential service, which is only capable of providing (absent any other load) only 48 kW.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/materials/nanoporous-material-combines-the-best-of-battery-and-supercapacitor-capabilities

Just wanted to show you some fpv footage from the latest movie. hope you enjoy :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tHs95F5gOE

Helen Greiner who co-founded iRobot 14 years ago spoke yesterday at the DEMO conference. Helen is now the co-founder and CEO of CyPhy Works, a startup developing “Unmanned Ariel Systems” or drones for industrial applications. In her brief DEMO Labs talk (see video below), Helen takes us through the next five years of drones — from hobbyist toys to industrial... surveillance.

more:

http://robohub.org/drone-outlook-the-next-5-years/

Hi guys,

I recently bought Pixhak AP and finally calibrated it on TBS Disco. It fly's really stable and reliable. The Twinstar is flying with APM 2.5 and same thing here, 6km fpv is a pure plesure.

Also wanted to show you our designated spot for drone flying and testing in Warsaw, Poland. Do you have a place where officials let you fly your drones? You hear a lot about restrictions in U.S and other countries. I wonder how is it in your place of living?

Best to All,

Greg