Blogs

Good afternoon.
I would like to show you a project we are working on.
We've started it a half and a year ago.
We just want to share a video shoot of us with it in our ski trip.
We needed a compact and fast drone which could work at a high altitude in low temperatures. Fully automatic, for easy and convenient use.
We built the first model and successfully tested it.
It works fine at 3600 meters altitude and temperature of minus 17 C degrees.
 It is the most stylish and beautiful. We have rich experience in carbon construction, and therefore we have created everything from composite materials .
Now we are developing a version 2.  It will have maximized streamline. We develop software that will make use of it as simple as possible.
We are looking for money right now to complete the development of the second version. And we want to go to Kickstarter or indiegogo.
It would be great if someone could help to advance the project.
Here are our links. Following them you may watch the creation process and construction of the first version.
We will publish the release date soon.

https://www.facebook.com/atlaserida

https://twitter.com/AtlasErida

www.eridacopter.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wneALMvWq70

Epic job by the 3DR video team. They got their Ridley Scott on ;-)

On March 23rd in San Jose, we had the first DroneCode conference, as part of the Embedded Linus Conference. Above is just the first meeting of official DroneCode members (mostly representatives of the member companies), but the rest of the day was in a much larger forum for technical presentations. 

The presentations have now been posted here and here, and copied below:

Monday kicked off our first Dronecode conference as part of the Embedded Linux Conference.  Here is a summary of the presentations made at the Dronecode conference and Drone related presentations made as part of the Embedded Linux Conference.

1. Keynote - Chris Anderson

   • Alignment on 2015 roadmap

   • 2. Clarity about what we want from the members

   • 3. Clarity about division of labor between companies and community

   • 4. Improved “Architecture of Participation”

   • 5. Plan for outreach to potential partners/communities

2. ArduPilot Overview - Andrew Tridgell

3. PX4 Overview - Lorenz Meier

Drone related ELCConference Summary 23-25Mar2015

1. Ardupilot and Linux - presented at ELC - Andrew Tridgell

2. Qualcomm and PX4 -Mark Charlesbois

3. Edison Takes Flight - Joel B. Rosenzweig Mark F. Brown

4. Open Sourcing Humanitarian Airlift - Mark Jacobson and Jessie Mooberry

5. Flying Penguins - Clay McClure.pdf

   • Embedded Linux applications for autonomous UAVs​​​​​​

​​​ 6. Application of Data Fusion to Aerial Robotics - Paul Riseborough

Unconference:

1. IMU Temperature Compensation - Hessel van der Molen

   • Temperature compensation goals

   • Calibration procedure

2. PX4 VTOL Vector Control - Roman Bapst

   • VTOL support in PX4 native

   • High-level overview of the benefits of the new controller (submitted to IROS 2015)

   • Current simulation capabilities

   • System identification and infrastructure (wind tunnels)

3. UAVCAN - Pavel Kirienko

   • PX4 ESC codebase

   • ESC developments and test state

   • Future convergence of the individual CAN node codebases

   • The onboard distributed system with all actuators and sensors on the same bus

4. Automated 3D SITL with 3D Physics - Thomas Gubler and Andreas Antener

   • Additional capabilities of the 3D physics simulator over standard flight simulators

   • Headless and interactive benefits

   • Logging and post-flight analysis

5. IMU experiments and filtering strategy - Jonathan Challinger

   • IMU sampling strategy

   • API for accessing raw samples from PX4 IMU sensor drivers

   • handling of delta angles and delta velocities

   • use of filtered and unfiltered data in EKF

   • IMU temperature calibration

   • libraries/AP_InertialSensor/examples/coning.py

6. EKF developments - Paul Riseborough

   • fusing of optical flow and rangefinder data

   • handling of GPS and non-GPS operation transition

   • handling of height above ground estimates

   • special cases for landing and takeoff

7. Ardupilot VTOL - Trevor Strand and Mike Remaly

   • Tiltrotor Fundamentals

   • Combining The Strengths of “ArduPilot”

   • Tiltrotor Challenges

   • Testing

   • Tiltrotor Road Map

8. Travis, Jenkins and Hans - Lorenz Meier

   • Travis unit testing and general CI

   • Jenkins automated SITL testing with environment / physics / simulated camera views

   • Hans - automated on-hardware testing

9. ROS and Gazebo - Tully Foote

   • ROS in general

   • ROS on drones

   • existing ROS use cases

10. DroneAPI Structure and Usage - Kevin Hester

    • structure of DroneAPI

    • language bindings

    • ROS vs DroneAPI - when to use them?

    • licensing of core components

    • future steps: stats, gcs df upload, px4 support,  mavlink evolution

In a 9-page legal letter, with 28 itemized conditions and limitations, the FAA issued an exemption to Amazon to enable Prime Air to test in US airspace.

The FAA letter, dated April 8th, was filled with pages of legalese, but still limits testing to VLOS (visual line of sight) instead of autonomous flight, and flight controlled by a human operator. Amazon’s drones can not fly faster than 100 miles per hour, fly higher than 400 feet above ground level, and can not weigh more than 55 pounds, according to the letter.

Read more onRobohub

Blackmagic has just raised the bar. Global shutter, RC control and dynamic range. 

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmicrocinemacamera

All details here

From the Guardian (via sUAS News):

A new drone-building series called Airheads is due to air on Sunday nights on BBC2 in the key Top Gear slot at 8pm. 

The corporation may be hoping to recapture some of the success of the popular technology show Robot Wars with the launch of the new drone-based series.

While there is no suggestion that it is a replacement for Top Gear – it is scheduled to begin after the hit motoring show was due to finish its run before it was postponed following Jeremy Clarkson’s suspension – Airheads is likely to appeal to the same male audiences as the car show.

Robot Wars ran on BBC2 between 1998 and 2003 before moving to Channel 5 for a single season, and featured teams of amateur and professional ‘roboteers’ constructing their own machines which were then pitted against each other in an arena.

Airheads features three teams of drone enthusiasts who have to build a UAV and compete with each other in a studio and on location.

Only the first challenge – a race – has been revealed.

The programme is being made by Graham Norton’s company So Television and in its application form for contestants it says the series will be “shown on BBC2 Sundays at 8pm” – the slot that Top Gear occupies when it is on air.

Augusta National – Masters Tournament 16th hole as seen by a drone

From HookedOnGolf:

Over the last couple of years now I’ve gotten deep into aerial photos and videos via unmanned aerial vehicles, known by most as drones.  I’ve build some aerial video/photo “ships” and am loving the angles and views I can capture of golf courses.

To me a drone is a large unmanned killing vehicle used in war.  Unfortunately people who don’t know much call the little copters equate them with the bigger drones.  Small copters like the ones I have have a bad wrap and there are some true boneheads doing dumb things with them.  These “drones” can provide so many great functions otherwise not available. One such great one is the aerial flyovers of the holes at the Masters Tournament.

You may have not realized, but when the TV or online coverage does their hole tours, the flyover videos are shot by an aerial drone similar to what I use. Here’s a screen cap of a drone shot of the 16th hole above.  The dramatic views and videos are absolutely awesome.  Love them.

There’s an especially cool shot which starts in a bunker and rises up to show the hole.  Another one the camera starts by some trees and rises straight up over them.  Very cool.

The aerial coverage and how close the camera can get to the tree lines makes the great Masters broadcast even better.

This is the hexacopter I use for golf video:

Ok, so here at last, is the autonomous payload delivery video.

Configured to use Camera trigger on RC10, and the DIGICAM actions in mission planning. Works perfectly well, but the DIGICAM command is not "rate determining"; ie the APM can perform other commands while DIGICAM is fired (eg LAND). This makes things interesting, as we found out - it was dropped the payload way before LAND had been completed, even when DIGICAM comes after LAND in the sequence.

No doubt there will be a million questions, but let me answer the obvious ones:

1. Why is the auto mission with only one bottle, when a moment earlier it was 4?

Well, for one, we got thirsty. And two - we discovered that the LAND command can run in parallel to others…so the drone dropped it from 5m. And we burst one. But it was very funny. So now, we use a waypoint to control the height, not LAND. It means the payload command cannot be executed until the altitude has been reached.

2. Why is it so short?

Because I wanted to create a video that couldn’t be faked, and was “youtube friendly”. I didn’t quite succeed, because you can’t see me *not* operating the sticks or Switches. Also, you would program in delays, to allow the drone to settle first, before dropping the load. Or even land. If you want a 20 minute-r with a massive complex mission, speak up, and I’ll see what I can do.

3. Why is the load range so wide?

Because ultimately, it depends on how well you pack the payload that determines how will it performed. Also, the unit here is just one magnet. The final 8kg unit will have four. Although that’s a theoretically 36kg of power, the laws of physics and flight make the in-the-air figure a fair bit lower. But I will be demonstrating the most my little X8 can lift in a future video - 8kg.

4. Why didn’t you use the tablet to do the auto mission stuff?

Because my tablet is rubbish and unreadable in this bright sunlight. But rest assured, In tower you can program exactly the same mission as this.

Workswell company (also known as Drone thermal camera) together with its partner Vertical Images will be exhibiting at the "air show" in Germany - AERO Friedrichshafen 2015. Together, we will present a drone thermal imaging system, ie. both Workswell Thermal Vision Pro and Workswell Thermal Vision Light.

Our customer Vertical Images has experience with our thermal imaging system their use it in various applications. At exhibition will present these applications, including unmanned aircraft, as well as a hot news, ie. Coaxial hexacoptéry DESTINY, capable of carrying a load 1.5 kg for 50 minutes, or 10 kg load for 25 minutes.

The exhibition will be held 15 to 18 April 2015. You can find us at booth A2-501, Hall focused on the "drones".

Watch the report from the exhibition on our social network profiles: Twitter and Facebook.

Question for all readers for discussion: Have you ever been on AERO Friedrichshafen? Do you mean, that this event is interesting for our community?

Whatever type of drone you have, let's try to find a new deal for them.

Just wanted to share a photo of my Aeroquad cyclone.I have flown at least 25 successful autonomous

missions with this Quad.In my humble opinion the 3DR pixhawk is simply the best autopilot out there!

If anyone needs a simple & inexpensive method to setup a telemetry connection over 4G, I wrote a free guide http://www.4gmetry.com/ and created a dedicated group http://diydrones.com/group/4gmetry. S.

Dear All

we have moved to a new website www.one-man-drone.com. It gives an idea on how the system will look!

After testing of motors and props and the carbon fiber tubes, we are currently building the craft. We have done quite some R&D to take all the steps in designing and received lots of comments. Thanks for that!

Will keep you updated when we move in a few weeks to the tests. Will start without fuselage and use sand bags, don't worry!! We have done quite some R&D on the technical part, the market, certification, and RPAS applications firefighting, agriculture. We see it can become professional after the demo. Any suggestions welcome!

Best Regards, Winfried

Its that time of year again, this time Chris Anderson will be joined by tech evangelist Robert Scoble, Eric Cheng from DJI and Jim Williams head of the FAA's airspace integration efforts there are 30 more speakers full list here.

http://susbexpo.com/speakers-2015/

At sUAS News we try to bring people with a genuine voice together in small room with a handful of attendees. Giving the folks attending a chance to meet and speak with these folks. 

I don't think we will ever have the largest show around, but have been lucky to attract the loudest voices.

Those of you who backed the Robot Dragonfly on Indiegogo back in 2012 may not have received anything yet, but you have had the experience of watching the team learn just how hard it is to make a flapping-wing drone. It's nearly two years late and still a long way to go, but at least they have something sort of flying now. 

Remember when a regional FAA inspector told a guy to take down his YouTube drone video? As we expected, that was a whoops. The FAA has now distributed a notice to its inspectors that tells them not to do this, and otherwise provides some guidelines on enforcement based on Internet media. Key paragraph:

 In order to take legal enforcement action. Inspectors are reminded that:

• Electronic media posted on the Internet is only one form of evidence which may be used to support an enforcement action and it must be authenticated;

• Electronic media posted on the Internet is ordinarily not sufficient evidence alone to determine that an operation is not in compliance with 14 CFR; however, electronic media may serve as evidence of possible violations and may be retained for future enforcement action; and

• Inspectors have no authority to direct or suggest that electronic media posted on the Internet must be removed.

Note: Electronic media posted on a video Web site does not automatically constitute a commercial operation or commercial purpose, or other non-hobby or non-recreational use.

We are about to release an application for the Lepton with the Raspberry Pi. We are currently using it with the Pure Engineering breakout board but have a custom "shield" or "hat" with RC receiver input and additional features in the works.

The main features are:

• Unlimited amount of user defined palettes via config file
• Live video feed for FPV and simultaneous saving of the image stream as .png on the SD card
• Direct control of the Pi via GPIO pins. No need for SSH to control the Pi

GPIO pins control the following functions:

Input 1 (GPIO 18): Cycle between palettes
Input 2 (GPIO 17): Toggle recording on/off
Input 3 (GPIO 27): Calibrate sensor
Input 4 (GPIO 22): Auto range (set the scale compared to the ambient temperature)

A Palette is defined with 11 simple gradients like this:

# Palette 4, Fire & Ice
palette_4_def_0_rgb=0,0,255 # Lower than min
palette_4_def_1_rgb=0,0,0 # 0% temperature
palette_4_def_2_rgb=32,32,32 # 13% temperature
palette_4_def_3_rgb=64,64,64 # 25% temperature
palette_4_def_4_rgb=96,96,96 # 38% temperature
palette_4_def_5_rgb=128,128,128 # 50% temperature
palette_4_def_6_rgb=159,159,159 # 63% temperature
palette_4_def_7_rgb=191,191,191 # 75% temperature
palette_4_def_8_rgb=223,223,223 # 88% temperature
palette_4_def_9_rgb=255,255,255 # 100% temperature
palette_4_def_10_rgb=255,0,0 # Higher than max

A short demo clip with the app cycling through "white hot", "black hot", "iron bow" and "fire and ice" palettes can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7egzg9vEsB8

The app is ready to ship. Only some QA and documentation is left to do.

Point Clouds, or 3D models derived from high resolution aerial imagery, are in fact nothing new. Several software platforms already exist to reconstruct a series of 2D aerial images into fully fledged 3D-fly-through models. Check out these very neat examples from my colleagues at Pix4D and SenseFly:Castle, Jesus and Matterhorn. But what does a castle, Jesus and a mountain have to do with humanitarian action? As noted in my previous blog post (on the World Bank's use of UAVs in response to Cyclone Pam), there’s only so much disaster damage one can glean from nadir (that is, vertical) imagery and oblique imagery. Lets suppose that the nadir image below was taken by an orbiting satellite or flying UAV right after an earthquake, for example. How can you possibly assess disaster damage from this one picture alone? Even if you had nadir imagery for these houses before the earthquake, your ability to assess structural damage would be limited.

Continue reading here...

I was surprised that I had not seen it here. I think it is a wonderful machine to have.

Quote from the Kickstarter page:

Stepcraft 2 is the world's first universal desktop CNC solution designed to turn your ideas into reality.  It is the only machine that can Mill, Carve, Engrave, 3D Print, Laser Engrave, work as a Vinyl/Craft Cutter, Plot and more...  Stepcraft 2 will be the ONLY desktop CNC system with an ATC (Automatic Tool Changer), making complex jobs even easier.

The Stepcraft is available in 3 sizes and plenty of pledges to choose from. The project has reached it's target on Kickstarter already (by 3 times). More at the Kickstarter project page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224743317/stepcraft-2-universal-desktop-cnc-3d-printer-for-e?ref=nav_search