The Unmanned Innovations QuadCopter. They mostly focus on building custom autopilots for quads mostly but they are also working on adding support for hexa, octa, traditional helicopters. My understanding is when you buy their quad, they also give you the source code that it's flying. A very technical bunch who really seemed to know their stuff and were happy to talk about the details of quad copter control algorithms. They backed up the our current theory on the cause of the altitude jump that some of us see when yawing arducopter is most likely caused by the non-linearity of pwm vs thrust in the ESCs/motors.
The MicroFlown microphone that could determine the exact direction of loud sounds (like a person clapping their hands). In their demonstration video it was mounted in the plane shown and then flown overhead. As it flew it would determine the location of simluated gunshots on a ground station. Yours for around $25k.
Left is a Carl Hayden Falcon Robotics (highschool!!) student who along with the rest of his class had put together a functional underwater uav. The pros must be worried when they see even highschool students are building UAVs these days! The robot was driving around in a water tank at various times during the 3 day event (video here).
Right: some innovative work on a monocopter by a team of 3 Embry-Riddle University students. The blades were 3d printed and apparently it flies although they did not have a demostration video.
JDI's hexa and fancy camera mount. Why does it have slightly upturned arms? Presumably for added stability. $6k which compared to the military quads (all >$30k+) suddenly seemed like a bargain. The reps I talked to were all business, there to sell and not actually much fun to talk to but it was a nice looking system and they were one of the few teams actually doing real flight demos.
Two DIYDrones comrades, on the left, FalconUAV which uses the procerus (now lockheed martin) autopilot aimed for use by law enforcements. On the right, ScionUAS's latest traditional helicopter UAS using a custom autopilot. Both systems were demostrated at the recent Colorado Multicopter Rodeo as well by the way.
The Aeryon Quad and accompanying ground station which can be yours for around 100k. As many of you know it has no RC style controller, it's all done through the IPAD like ground station software. It's strong point is that it can still fly in very strong winds and easily replaceable arms which simply snap on and off (i.e. no wires to fiddle with). It was surprisingly light and seemed mostly made of plastic.
Castle Creations displays Ed Kirk's (a DIYDrones member's) tricopter and their prototype device that provide feedback of the motor's RPM, current, etc to the microcontroller. They also appear to be working on ESCs that are specifically suited to multicopters.
UAVFactory's plane platform (i.e. no autopilot) and groundstation (not including computer) priced at around $16k and $9k respectively. The plane boasts a flight time of >50hours and they claim 70+ are in operation around the world.
MicroDrones's quadcopter boasting 90min flight time. Even in outdoor (i.e. non ideal) conditions the rep claimed an hour is very possible. They sadly wouldn't divulge any details of how they accomplished this but some other attendees believed it was accomplished mosty with an incredibly light frame, no payload and by sacrificing maneuverability and control for the sake of flight time. I think a T3 contest on DIYDrones is in order to see how well we can do.
On the Left is MicroPilot's based autopilot line-up (about 1.2k ~ 5k I believe) for a variety of platforms including traditional helicopters and airplanes.
On the right is VectorNav's AHRSs which are incredibly small despite including the 3-axis accel, gyros, sensor fusion processor and a GPS! The silver ones are the SMD versions, the red ones are the same tech but enclosed in a case and are meant to be attached to your navigation controller via a (serial?) cable. These guys were great fun to talk to as they were very technical and happy to get into the details. In fact, like ArduPilot they use the Invense MPU60XX for the accel/gyro and a ublox for the GPS but their value add is the sensor fusion algorithms (12 or 13 stage kalman filter - they don't rely on the DMP) and the chips come all pre-calibrated (temp and drift).
Top Left: LiquidRobotic's Long distance wave powered research platform. These travel at only 2mph but because they require no fuel they are sent out to sea on up to one year missions to gather data. Solar panels on the top power the sensors and autopilot. Iridium is used for two way data transfer including current location back to the ground station and way point updates. There's apparently 4 floating about as we speak, one on it's way to Japan.
Top Right: MorrisTech displays their 3d printed titanium creations.
Bottom Left: IRobot's not just making vacuum cleaners anymore. The special bit is the articulated track which allows to climb over rocks easily.
Bottom Right: Fly-N-Sense's coaxial copter designed for safety. Besides tech hurdles, they're looking at the legal hurdles faced trying to getting permission to fly over crowds.
Generally people I talked to thought the tech's advanced a lot in the past year. Most people have a system that does waypoints and provides live video so to stand-out you need something extra or you need to show how you're taking that tech and putting it into real applications. Despite that I didn't see any cooperating robots or robots that can perform a more vaguely defined mission completely on their own (like filming a crime scene from every angle)...maybe next year!
Part of a report on the AUVSI show by the Robot Report. Also check out this NPR radio report on the same trend.
