2010 was quite a year at DIY Drones. The community doubled in size and traffic, ArduPilotMega and ArduCopter were announced and shipped, and factories were started in San Diego, Bangkok and Tijuana. Amateur UAVs took off!
Next year is going to be even bigger, with dozens of new products, easier to use versions of current products and cool new platforms I can't tell you about yet ;-) Stay tuned for announcements over the next month, but in the meantime, here are some of the highlights of 2010:
January:
First Ardu quad (Jose Julio's ArduIMU-powered beauty)
DIY Drones hit 7,000 members
February:
White House talks about DIY Drones
ArduPilot 2.5 (first one with super-accurate navigation) released
March:
ArduPilotMega comes off the production line
APM IMU shield enters testing
April:
Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition: Doug Weibel's ArduPilot comes in second (Team Robota, shown above won)
An iPhone controller for RC aircraft
DIY Drones goes to the FIRST Robotics Competition
May:
Paparazzi co-founder Pascal Brisset dies
DIY Drones goes to Maker Faire
June:
UAV DevBoard Matrixpilot is flying
July:
ArduPilot Hardware-in-the-loop simulation released
August:
September:
DIY Drones factory gets new pick-and-place machine
Willow Garage's ROS now running on quads
October:
ArduCopter Alpha code released
November:
DIY Drones in front page Wall Street Journal article
PixHawk Qgroundcontrol GCS now supports APM
December:
ArduPilotMega 1.0 code released
ArduCopter RC2 released, team announces plans to move to APM-based code
ArduPirates take over ArduCopter NG development
Comments
Congratulations DIY Drones! We are impressed and looking forward to the future of the group.
The picture in this post caught my attention...my hats off to Antonio and the rest of team Robota who produced an exceptionally compact and innovative UAV package for the Outback Challenge this year.
Chris and contributing members: Thanks for all the effort and dedication to the DIY Drones cause!