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Pierce Brosnan and Selma Hayek, filmed in Malibu for the forthcoming film How To Make Love Like An Englishman.

From the Mail Online:

According to a recent report in The Washington Post, a growing number of film-makers are employing the use of drones for their movies.

They include Skyfall, Oblivion, Man Of Steel, Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Hunger Games, The Dark Knight Rises and Iron Man 3.

The newspaper reports that the use of drones in modern film making has a number of advantages.

Drones have 'more reach than a crane,' and are 'more nimble than a helicopter' meaning directors can pull of more 'risky acrobatic stunts.'

'Ten years ago, when you wanted an action sequence you did them at 18 frames a second, then projected them at 24 - so that you could do them slow but it looks fast,' drone cinematographer Emmanuel Previnaire said earlier this year. 'Now everything has to happen fast. It's become a very demanding industry in terms of motion control.'

Like many of you I do make shift jobs with wiring and creative soldering to move my power around and distribute the correct power to the correct areas.

And like most of you know, the APM cannot really give power to components (it can but it is not advised).

So on the end of the day is you have a lot of cable ties holding a bunch of wiring together and if you need to change something e.g the FPV transmitter you have to disassemble a lot and reassemble.

Now with this board I want to print I am going to eradicate most of the wiring and issues surrounding the connection of apm sensors.

I am thinking of putting a voltage regulator between the 12v and 5v so I can just plug an extra lipo (11.1 1000mah) in the 12 volt and all of my sensor equipment is getting the correct power.

Also what I have done is removed the radio connections power from the apm (one would cut the ground and voltage wire coming from the apm)

So if someone could make a change to this, what would it be and why am I eagerly awaiting your input.   

Just kidding of course!

As a member of the Midwestern Unmanned Agricultural Vehicle Association, I am pleased to announce the establishment of the first state chapter of MUAVA! The Kansas Chapter would like to invite any UAS enthusiasts interested in the usage of these systems for agricultural purposes. As a member of MUAVA, you will be supporting the usage of drones within agriculture while also working on the forefront of Agricultural Drone Application! If you would like to join the Kansas chapter feel free to contact me at kevin-morrow@hotmail.com. If you would like to begin or join another chapter you may contact the the head of MUAVA by messaging him here. Once again, this is a very important opportunity for drone enthusiasts in Kansas to recognize a way to make a positive difference in the world with something they do for fun! 

Report from IROS from IEEE Spectrum:

MUWA or "Multi-field Universal Wheel for Air-land Vehicle" (and also Japanese for "Dream Ring") is one of these designs: it's a quadrotor surrounded by a circular piece of foam that makes it capable of (among many other things) balancing itself sideways like a wheel and rolling along the ground.

Meet the Nine Eagles Galaxy Visitor 2. This little quad, which looks an awful lot like a mini-DJI Phantom, actually carries some pretty impressive features for the size and price.

I have applied my own personal translation to the specs, as well as get some additional information from sources, and will share my findings.

Two of the coolest features in this 4 inch quad are the heading lock feature, and the follow-me feature.

The first feature allows this quad to be flown with directional continuity. This is similar to the, "headfree," or, "carefree," modes found on larger quads. In short, the cyclic stick will always move the quad in the same direction no matter the yaw of the aircraft. Forward goes forward, sideways goes sideways, and back goes back, no matter which way the quad is actually facing. This can be turned off and on I am told, though I haven't confirmed if this can be done, literally, on the fly. Either way, in a micro-quad, this is a HUGE addition, in my opinion.

The second cool feature, follow-me, allows the quad to follow the transmitter as the pilot moves. While this quad can be used with other controllers, I am told the provided controller is what the quad locks onto for this feature. Building on the follow me feature, the quad also has a return to pilot function. In short, you stand still and it follows the transmitter to where you are standing. While these features aren't done in the same way as the bigger quads, which use GPS, they are still pretty cool for a $100 quad!

This quad also comes with a camera, which I have been told can shoot video at 720p HD. 

I have been advocating for small consumer grade quads with features of the bigger guys, and have been researching building my own. The more I research, the more I come to realize there is already someone pulling it off cheaper across the Pacific. I have owned several Nine Eagles products, and found them to be relatively reliable, but I would love to see a similarly sized higher quality build come from one of the more major players in the UAS field. If it could be done for around $500, with higher quality components, and a great support network, I think there could be a significant market.

I've spent a lot of time developing a workflow that allowed me to go from 3D point cloud data to a textured 3D model to serve as a modeling basis for games, visualizations, 3D printing and maquette work (CNC machines on foam). There were always annoying issues with software crashes, manual tweaks taking lots of time, too detailed models or models that had impossible geometry for texturing. This workflow here is fully automated and allows you to define the detail you require (in the point cloud sampling step and poisson surface reconstruction). You can use any tool you like for those steps, as long as you don't rotate, scale or translate the point cloud. The end result is not perfect, because texturing is a bit off, but hopefully someone solves that at some point.

The objective here is to show that a simple aircraft can be used to map a bit of terrain and deliver a textured 3D model within 24 hours to a group of modelers for virtualization without expensive tech like laser scanners and the likes. The model gives them the general shape and form of the terrain, the size and constraints of buildings, the locations of trees and this helps to shape custom meshes into size and position.

If you keep the area more constrained like a building, you should be getting better reconstruction results. The number of photos used here was a bit sparse.

A long long time since I published last time, I'm drawing something fun and I thought you would like to see it!

It is a small frame all cnc machined from delrin sheet for 5" propellers. It seems a crazy project but i have a friend flying this kind of multicopters and it is really fun!

It is not originally thought for Arducopter but I recently purchased some Ardupilot 2.6 and i am seriously thinking to install one of them here.

Dimensions (center to center)

right to left = 165mm

front to back = 145mm

HD camera: Mobius

Ipad size comparison:

No long winded explanation, the advert is here along with some other videos. A big thanks to KMel for the tip off ;-)

Hi guys,

AUAV3 development board/autopilot has a new lower price - just $79.95 and could be ordered at ARSOVTECH.COM for EU and at AUAV.CO for US. The project becomes open hardware - all the schematics and pcb layouts will be supplied to the customers. The firmware is almost ready....not many bugs left and will be fixed soon. You could download it from here . You could try both Mark Whitehorn and Robert Dickenson branches as there are slight differences.

Let's recall some AUAV3 specifications:

• MCU – dsPIC33EP512MU810
• Onboard 32Mb Flash AT45DB321
• Onboard IMU – MPU6000
• Onboard compass – HMC5883
• Onboard absolute pressure sensor – BMP180
• Onboard CAN – MAX3051
• Two opto-isolated UARTs – for OSD and Telemetry
• One non-isolated UART
• One I2C and one SPI user interfaces
• 8xRC inputs, 8 servo outputs
• RSSI input
• USB
• 4 x Analog inputs
• 3 x Digital I/Os
• Universal GPS 4pin 2.54 connector
• ICSP 5pin connector
• 4 x LEDs red, blue, green and yellow
• Main power – external 5V
• Onboard 3.3V 1A LDO regulator
• Optional BackUp power – 1xLi-Po or 4xNiMH or other 5V
• ESC powering capability
• Preferable power supply – ACSP1 ( Current/Voltage sensor board + 5V3A DC-DC Buck )
• Dimensions – 45 x 35mm
• Two types of connectors – 2 x 3row x 14pin 2.54mm right angled or separate straight color coded connectors
• USB port for programming, etc.
• CAN interface with driver MAX3051
• ESD protection on I2C, USB and SPI
• Reverse power polarity protection by power MOSFET

More info you could get in tutorials section

Best regards

Nick Arsov and Phil Kocmoud

This picture flashed on the screen for only a few moments early last week while reporting on a recent "Drone Strike" in Pakistan.  Is this really the best they can do for research?  Your thoughts?

Here is Quaddict, a foldable quadcopter, made for your best aerial video experience.

Take a tour on www.aedrox.com

My roboclaw/pololu based segway is working well now with the new motors. I have closed the attitude loop with the gyros and the EKF pitch estimate. I will soon close the position loop with the encoders.

This is a video demonstrating a possible workflow that may improve stitching results from a range of aerial photos. This particular technique does not preserve geometry nor creates a georeferenced image, so its intended use is for visual indication only. It should be useful for any image type, whether its orthophoto, NIR or infrablue.

1. Imports the photos from the camera into visualsfm. No EXIF/GPS info or log required

2. Exports the vsfm cam orientation info and uses cloudcompare to open the "bundler" file to reproject the images, removing their specific orientations.

3. Importing the new photo tiles into microsoft ICE for generating an orthophoto like image.

A photo stitcher is designed to make seams go away, so it's tricky to be sure that all photos went to the right place. Sometimes you get roads veering off into impossible directions. When you take photos from different directions and rotations, the stitching software needs to figure out a lot orientation information based on the features it recognizes, yet it doesn't allow any input of external GPS(EXIF) or orientation information. The results can be pretty disappointing.You can even see with this technique that the stitching type misapplied a couple of photos in wrong locations.

This workflow instead makes use of structure-from-motion to calculate the camera positions and then reprojects the contents of each photo into a tile with a common "up" or "north". The idea is that these tiles can then be used in Microsoft ICE using the "planar motion 1 or 2" types of photo stitching (not shown in this video).

The end results aren't perfect, but usable for some situations. The CloudCompare process seems to introduce a lot of distortion into the images, This could be due to the altitude variations around the pit, assuming it's applying a complicated 3D reprojection. I've found that it works slightly better for flatter landscapes.

It is not always necessary to rotate over x by -90 degrees, only when you get thin looking tiles. In VisualSfM when the CMVS process starts, you actually need to kill it from task manager.

Testing out my New homebrew TCP/IP digital Secured Video,telemetry. same used by uav systems.

short test @ 500meters, flying in rainy weather.

Why Digital secured systems??
1. no Video interferences, no 3rd harmonics interferences. Compact Design. all in one solution. and the most important is. Secured Data. (encrypted)
2. hi bandwidth. can trnsmit both HD data video/audio, telemetry and radio control.
3. can power into 1 flight battery. (travel light)
4. GCS Module(weatherproof) all in one design. include diversity systems. and can both transmit and receive.

Enjoy.!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88PJO0xJHC8&feature=youtu.be

Transceiver Running @ 5.8ghz. with custom ant.

tx power 500mw.

Video @ d1 reso. 2-6mbits data streams.

latency @ 1-35ms

i use skywalker 1680.  and a uhf for my controls.

On Friday we experienced very high winds, 60-90km/h, or Beaufort 7-8, this caused damage in the area, actually knocking over some trees, etc.  I decided to go out and test the wind performance of my F450 quadcopter, see if it's even possible to fly a quad in such conditions, and test the inertial Loiter performance.

Overall, it went fairly well.  Flight control in Loiter was quite a bit better than flying manually.  Last year I tried flying a quad in 40 km/h winds, and it did not work at all.  As soon as I got off the ground, it was practically out of control and I spent another 2 minutes just trying to get it back on the ground safely.

I should point out that this could actually be considered a worst case setup.  The Tarot F450 frame I'm using is very flexible.  The quad can't be autotuned, because of that.  In fact, I haven't spent much time at all setting it up.  All of the settings are default, other than some of the basics like the Rate PIDs.  I haven't spent any time tuning up Loiter, or Alt Hold parameters.  I haven't even done CompassMot. (Sorry Randy!).  

Despite all of that, the copter performed fairly well, as you can see.  A properly setup quadcopter should do even better.  Unfortunately winds like these are rare so I can't go back and retest whenever I want.  So, taking this as it is, it was fun to do this test, and I think it shows off the performance potential of Arducopter fairly well. Another thing to keep in mind when watching the video, is to understand that while straight-line wind speeds were 60+ km/h, the area I was flying was in the lee of several large obstacles like houses and a forest. As such, the air was extremely turbulent, which is why you see quite a bit of violent movement. I expect if I was flying in a clear field, the copter would sit more stable, with a constant tilt angle to fight the wind.

I would have liked to do back-to-back testing of the performance of the quad vs. a helicopter, but I didn't have a heli ready for Loiter flying at the time.  Looking back at last year's video, it seems like the helicopter would have done quite well actually.  The video from last year was done on a helicopter with a flybar, using an APM1 with a worse baro, and didn't have inertial navigation at all. Even still, it was quite stable as you can see.

ConservationDrones.org‘s latest UAVs were recently deployed in Chitwan National Park in Nepal. We featured one of them, the Caipy video drone, in our last post (850 mm wingspan). Here is its big brother, the Vanguard drone (1400 mm wingspan). The Vanguard is a ‘glider-wing’ that has a flight time of 1 hour, a range of 40 km, and is designed to be durable and easy to launch (with a bungee cord). Due to the difficulty of locating suitable airstrips in the areas these drones would be operating in, the Vanguard is designed to sustain hard landings in high grass or bushy areas within national parks.

Special thanks goes to the WWF AREAS Programme (Asian Rhino and Elephant Action Strategy) which has been supporting the development of these new airframes.

Please watch my video where I describe the dream and how the 3DR drones were being used for agricultural applications.  Also I'd love to know if you think that the dream that I had is actually a feasible goal for 3D Robotics and the Unmanned Agricultural Vehicles Market.  I personally think its a reachable/attainable goal for 3DR, Market, and the FAA!  

Thanks for the Feedback,

Take it easy Diy Drones,

Joshua Johnson - Diy Drones News - MUAVA CEO

Looks like this University of New Hampshire ag research team is using an APM-powered ArduCopter for their research into the use of drones to spot crop disease. Excerpt from the Modern Farmer article:

“When you think about apple production now, a grower needs to walk through his orchard every day to make sure he sees any new insect pests or any new disease pests that come into an orchard,” says plant pathologist Kirk D. Broders, an assistant professor at UNH. “But when you’re talking about a 10, 20, 100-acre orchard, your ability to do that on a daily basis is almost impossible.”

But it is possible with a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, carrying an infrared camera that takes multispectral images of the orchard. A computer program crunches the wavelengths in each pixel, making it possible to hone in on colors and temperatures – and locate apple scab.

These guys have always made great videos, and now they're even better with footage from the air.  Name that copter at 3:07...