Hi everyone,
This is Colin Beighley from Swift Navigation and I just wanted to post a quick and shameless plug for our project on Kickstarter called Piksi. I believe it was mentioned by someone here a few weeks ago in a blog post, but we never got around to properly introducing ourselves. The campaign has just over a day left as of this posting, and it's been wildly more successful than we had ever dreamed! I wanted to make sure you guys had a chance to see it before it's over.
Piksi is a low cost, highly accurate GPS receiver targeted at use in autonomous systems. It uses a technique called RTK to reduce the position error from several meters (with a regular GPS receiver) down to a few centimeters.
We believe this level of localization accuracy is a key enabling technology for lots of UAV applications. Think autonomous takeoff and landing, highly dynamic / precise outdoor flightpaths (like an outdoor Vicon!), GPS-based attitude determination, and more. However, currently a GPS system with these capabilities costs close to $10,000, far too expensive for most hobbyist and civilian applications. We've reduced that price by 10 times, hopefully making this technology accessible to many more people.
Piksi is also an open platform. The software, schematics and PCB layout are all open source. This makes it a great tool for learning about GPS, implementing clever new positioning algorithms and easing systems integration.
We are really excited to see what the people in the DIYDrones community will come up with. Putting powerful tools in the hands of such a creative group of people will surely lead to magical things!
If you have any questions, feel free to respond here or email us at info@swift-nav.com. Please spread word about the campaign!
Thanks,
Colin
Co-Founder, Swift Navigation Inc
Comments
I've been following this project and I'm curious as to what people think the pros and cons are of one radio modem over the other. Seems to me that XBee is more ubiquitous. And wouldn't the mesh networking features of XBees be useful in improving coverage in cluttered environments e.g. urban settings?
On other subjects, I'm curious as to what conditions are necessary to get the 4cm accuracy. How many satellites do you need to see? What else could adversely affect the accuracy?
Hi guys, thanks for the support!
@Eduardo, @MV Reddy : We're going to survey the Kickstarter backers at the end of the campaign to see if they'd prefer RFD900 radios instead of XBee's. We've been talking to 3D Robotics about this and they've been very helpful.
I met these two guys at the SUSB conference. They were very smart and knowledgeable about GPS inner workings (obviously!). It's more complicated than it might seem and I know that a lot has gone into developing these receivers. I'm really glad they reached their goal and excited to see these units in action in a few months!
I wonder when DIY enthusiasts come up with a 100$ solution with 2 ublox and dataradio.
How about pairing it up with the RFD900 radio modems instead?
i have a question, using xbee radio how many meter this solution provide ?????
20km ou 2 km ?
Gary, $1000 really? It seems less expensive than that. May be Im missing something.
I really hope you are successful at this, it looks like a usable RTK solution is going to cost right around $1000.00 and that is very reasonable for what you are offering.
Congratulations on getting 10 times your goal.