A company called RobotAV has released a standard $80 Nitro Models Predator with an autopilot and RC system already installed. Sounds great until you get to the price: $2,500!
To be fair, it's an IMU based autopilot and has other cool stuff like a gyro-stabalized nosewheel (not sure why, since the Predator with a standard steerable nosewheel handles fine on the ground). But it seems to have its functionality crippled to avoid regulatory or AMA issues.
It isn't a programmable autopilot; instead it just seems to have return-to-launch and manually-triggered circling--no programmable waypoints. No ground station and the autopilot functions are just controlled by RC, so it sounds like it's designed mostly for FPV flying rather than true autonomous flight
Given that you can make an identical-looking ArduPilot-powered Predator that's fully autonomous and programmable for less than $500, I'm not quite sure what accounts for the astronomical price. Does anyone know more about this outfit?
HobbyKing.com has a knockoff of the nitroplanes Predator for sale. The span is 74 inches vice 63. Looks good in the photos, but I have not seen one in person. The cost is 67 USD plus 28USD for shipping. Here is the link for those interested: http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=...
I agree with Mr. Bosak who may have more product development support and experience than others. For myself, the question about cost would be support - if it's email only, then yes, anything other than material cost and shipping isn't reasonable. However, if they would actually support ANY customer over the phone (i.e. literally someone with no experience just wanting to remotely view their property let's say ), warranty the product (hey this thing doesn't work - it just crashed and I want my money back...) and deal with all that, then $2500 ain't probably enough. Finally, it's a lead generator, just like the buzz it generated here. Some one calls up, discusses their application, then next thing you it's 25k not 2.5k...it isn't always about pcb, solder and wires.
Most of the IMU control systems flying around in the world have been developed by hobbyists, not PhD's. The ones who can do it for a salary in a big corporation are a different story, but the number of hobbyist UAV's flying at any moment is probably over 1000 while only a few dozen PhD developed UAV's are flying.
I believe Krzysztof Bosak is either defending the RobotAV system out of necessity because he may have ties to the operartion, or else he is seriuosly out of touch with the currrent project development environment.
"Open source coding is good for scientific exchange and low-importance home systems but not for high-integrity projects."
The entire weather, climate, river and ocean forecasting systems of the National Weather Service of the United States, from workstations to supercomputers, run on Linux,...
Our philosophy is to charge the lowest possible price to maximize the volume. We don't make money from the boards (and don't charge for intellectual property), but will soon be offering pre-built UAVs like this one. The difference being that they will cost about 1/5th as much and be twice as good ;-)
Chris,
I think you would know better of course but I am sure if you added up the time and effort yourself and Jordi have put into ArduPilot and sold it at price to recoup your inputs then it wouldn't be $24 (for which I am sure we are all extremely grateful)! Although maybe $2,500 is a bit steep....
Let's please dispel the IMU myth: all of the theoretical know-how you need to build one is available freely in papers that can be understood by an enthusiastic amateur who isn't afraid to spend some time in the library. The price of quality components is low and only getting lower.
The quality of work that makes it into the final product is entirely the responsibility of the project manager. Quality work can be done by open source communities if the engineers are organized properly.
If this UAV could perform a task useful to someone right out of the box, $2500 up front beats paying engineers to integrate ardupilot or the pic-based UAV Dev Board or paparazzi to achieve similar functionality. Whether this product is useful enough is another story.
"Open source coding is good for scientific exchange and low-importance home systems but not for high-integrity projects."
What?!?! What about Linux, Firefox, MySQL, Apache, Perl, Hadoop, etc?
Or, for that matter, our own Paparazzi? I'd invite you to reconsider your sweeping statement. Properly managed open source projects can be as good or better as closed-source. It's just a matter of project management.
Comments
"Open source coding is good for scientific exchange and low-importance home systems but not for high-integrity projects."
The entire weather, climate, river and ocean forecasting systems of the National Weather Service of the United States, from workstations to supercomputers, run on Linux,...
I think you would know better of course but I am sure if you added up the time and effort yourself and Jordi have put into ArduPilot and sold it at price to recoup your inputs then it wouldn't be $24 (for which I am sure we are all extremely grateful)! Although maybe $2,500 is a bit steep....
Mike
The quality of work that makes it into the final product is entirely the responsibility of the project manager. Quality work can be done by open source communities if the engineers are organized properly.
If this UAV could perform a task useful to someone right out of the box, $2500 up front beats paying engineers to integrate ardupilot or the pic-based UAV Dev Board or paparazzi to achieve similar functionality. Whether this product is useful enough is another story.
At very least something made of EPP or a flying wing for people new to RC.
No mention of a camera or if they left enough room in there to put one.
Still if they sell a couple good luck to them.
What?!?! What about Linux, Firefox, MySQL, Apache, Perl, Hadoop, etc?
Or, for that matter, our own Paparazzi? I'd invite you to reconsider your sweeping statement. Properly managed open source projects can be as good or better as closed-source. It's just a matter of project management.
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