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.
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heh wifes get use to it, just show her live view from fpv, and she will be amazed :)
^^^ LOL...
I build racecars and race them (naturally...)... I may be selling one to support my new hobby! If I tell my wife i'm buying a multi-rotor or fixed wing craft, she'll have a heart attack!
@Eric Steward I am sure a man with a financial background doesn't have to be a great engineer to greatly support the private drone industry :)
I am new to this world, but I found the presentation by Helen Greiner to be highly inspirational. I work in the financial arena. I went straight to iRobot's financials to read about their investments in the UAS space. that's when I realized that CyPhy Works was a separate entity! lol... :(
I wish I were an engineer. All I've ever built are race cars...
Thank you for sharing!
Gary--
Full disclosure, I left BU to go work at CyPhy Works. My comments might be biased. ;)
What I love about the hobbyist community is that it does an invaluable job of testing software and user interfaces. I know we did a lot of this together at OpenPilot and we've continued doing it after having moved on. But while fast innovation is critical, so is the plodding crossing of t's and dotting of i's. Developing an autonomous robust system that is capable of working in an industrial environment with >99% availability is extremely challenging. It's all those dreaded edge cases. Here's a quick list of things that pop into mind:
I optimistically think there are only a few more years of work to be done before we see large actors feel comfortable in depending on UAVs. Like Helen Greiner said in her talk, our demos are boring things, nothing like the thrilling videos on the internet. It's like watching an elevator go up and then come back down. It's taken a lot of unsexy work to get that far, but I don't know how else it could have been done. (If anyone has ideas, we're hiring!) Commercial aviation has set an incredibly high bar for safety and large-scale UAV operators will be expected to exceed that.
* P.S.: I love aviation. It's the only field where you can mix three different measurement systems and not look schizophrenic.
2009 called it want's its ideas back http://www.skysapience.com/ I can't believe that's really there thinking. What is not already being done right up to the 2018 bar?
I predict that OS hardware and software will be able to match or better their safety or stability claims by 2018. They have an in with the military so no doubt they will be able to sell their innovations there if they look all that exciting to the hobby tinkerer toy market time will tell.
The flying robot game is completely different to the ground robot world of 14 years ago. Way more players way more sexy. Innovation at a way faster rate.