It's been almost a decade since I launched DIY Drones (March 2007) and we've both grown hugely as a community and an industry in the intervening years. Drones work great, they're cheap and widely available, and both the the Dronecode and ArduPilot development communities that got their start here are doing amazing work to advance the technology, which is now at pro/aerospace level. So what's left to DIY?
How about autonomous cars? We actually got started with GPS-guided autonomous cars seven years ago with the ArduRover project, which is now the standard for outdoor rovers such as those that compete in the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition. But as the human-scale self-driving car industry takes off, more sophisticated computer vision and AI technology is the new frontier. There are scores of companies doing this, from Google and Tesla to Uber, GM, Ford, BWM and virtually all the other big car firms. But what about DIY?
Sounds like time for a new site/community! Thus DIY Robocars, which I've just launched in beta as a companion to this site. Right now it's just a blog, but I'll turn on the community forum elements in a week or two once I've got the core contributors in place. This one is based on the WordPress/bbPress stack, which should be more robust than the Ning platform that DIY Drones is based on. If it works well, we may port DIY Drones to this, too.
As you can see, I still don't have a good logo. Any ideas?
Comments
Hi Chris,
Excellent idea, maybe now that my new shop is done I can get serious about my XMAXX.
Response to corey from my view anyway.
Clearly advances in autonomous driverless passenger vehicles.
But to me importantly environmentally aware navigation through a complex environment.
The most important single item as the precursor to autonomous robots.
Drones are fun and there is a lot that can be done with them, but real autonomous robots will change the entire fabric of civilization.
If we last that long.
Best,
Gary