Famed MIT open innovation researcher Eric von Hippel has a new paper out on open innovation models, of which the DIY Drones dev teams are one. It's a pretty academic read, but I thought the framework he identifies in the above diagram was very interesting. I've drawn what I think the path of autopilots has been over the past five years ago, as the ease of communications between distributed participants and the falling cost of autopilot technology has taken what was once a military-industrial technology and made it accessible to open source teams such as our own. Did I get the arrow right?
I have to agree that it’s definitely not just the autopilots (or the software) that have an effect on the cost. Many of the innovations in the “electric revolution” have brought the costs, complexities and proximity issues of RC/RPA down a few notches. Is a “mishap” from corrupt or malformed code a factor? How can anyone guaranty that the system will work? Are we factoring in all of the hardware purchased and time spent on past and present iterations/versions that didn’t/don’t work? Then there is the regulatory side i.e. certification (whatever it looks like) is going to add thousands to the cost of using/producing any autonomous capabilities. The manned stakeholders really don’t see “open source” as a viable candidate when it comes to certification for use in the NAS. So, who will want to pay $10,000 for an autopilot (demand) that can only be used in a very small envelope?
There is a nice list of papers pointed by Chris's link, however I think that post refers to
"Modeling a Paradigm Shift:From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation"
direct link to PDF paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1513273_code698198....
hopefully this helps others finding the right paper :)
I would suggest that communication costs have continued to come down as social networking software has appeared, improved, and been adopted by mainstream internet users. I think new people feel more comfortable clicking around on this style of site site than they do wading into the boards at rcgroups.
As to arrow direction, the commercial autopilot I am most familiar with started with a single-user innovator at a university who went to work for a Producer Innovator. The Producer Innovator made the decision to open-source the autopilot software so that they could sell the hardware internationally, so that particular autopilot went down and to the right. I realize that does not directly relate to Chris's question.
I guess I might disagree with putting these two costs on orthogonal axes, maybe? I think that the cost of a single good electrical engineer designing something as complete and nice as an Arduino Duemilanove from scratch has not changed all that much over the years. Fab and component prices are on a well-known downward slope. The extra reduction of design costs has come from sharing designs in the Open Collaborative space so that no one has to start from scratch and innovations are not limited to electrical engineers. The availability of common file formats, hardware design tools and software interfaces fit in there somewhere too. So I guess I am saying that the open collaborative tools that are being used by the Open Collaborative Innovators reduce communication and design costs in almost equal measure. The collaborative communities also tend to assimilate the Single User Innovators and Producer Innovators that aren't protecting intellectual property or complying with ITAR. So I guess I vote for a red arrow that goes a little to the left but mostly straight down...
Comments
"Modeling a Paradigm Shift:From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation"
direct link to PDF paper:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1513273_code698198....
hopefully this helps others finding the right paper :)
As to arrow direction, the commercial autopilot I am most familiar with started with a single-user innovator at a university who went to work for a Producer Innovator. The Producer Innovator made the decision to open-source the autopilot software so that they could sell the hardware internationally, so that particular autopilot went down and to the right. I realize that does not directly relate to Chris's question.
I guess I might disagree with putting these two costs on orthogonal axes, maybe? I think that the cost of a single good electrical engineer designing something as complete and nice as an Arduino Duemilanove from scratch has not changed all that much over the years. Fab and component prices are on a well-known downward slope. The extra reduction of design costs has come from sharing designs in the Open Collaborative space so that no one has to start from scratch and innovations are not limited to electrical engineers. The availability of common file formats, hardware design tools and software interfaces fit in there somewhere too. So I guess I am saying that the open collaborative tools that are being used by the Open Collaborative Innovators reduce communication and design costs in almost equal measure. The collaborative communities also tend to assimilate the Single User Innovators and Producer Innovators that aren't protecting intellectual property or complying with ITAR. So I guess I vote for a red arrow that goes a little to the left but mostly straight down...