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Temple of Autonomous Machine

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[Image: The archaeological robot Tlaloc II-TC, a design descendent of Tlaloque I, courtesy of INAH/Cortesía].

A news item over at Archaeology reports that a little wireless robot called Tlaloc II-TC will soon "investigate the far reaches of a tunnel found beneath the Temple of the Plumed Serpent at Teotihuacan," entering a chamber "estimated to be 2,000 years old, and [that] may have been used as a place for royal ceremonies or burials."

The robot will then make laser scans of the interior.

 [Image: The archaeological robot Tlaloc II-TC, courtesy of INAH/Cortesía].

This is only the "third time anywhere in the world that such an automaton [has been] used to design excavation strategies," adds HispanicallySpeakingNews.com.

[Image: The robot design team and different models of the surveyors; photos by Alma Rodríguez for El Universal].

Incredibly, though, the mission—called "Project Tlalocan, Underground Road"—will also involve a smaller robot, described as a "bug," that will be deployed by Tlaloc II.

According to my own bad, Google-assisted translation of an article published in Provincia, "The team also has a robot 'bug' that is carried by the lead vehicle, which descends based on instructions from a computer. It measures 40 cm with outstretched arms and carries an infrared camera, and it conducts exploration of ground-level terrain, avoiding obstacles."

[Image: The robot design team and different models of the surveyors; photos by Alma Rodríguez for El Universal].

It gets even more interesting when we then read that there is yet another, "third part" of the ensemble, a "robot made with four propellers" that can "remain suspended in the air and take pictures with video cameras."

It's a drone, in other words—part of a whole family of proliferating machines—but, for now, it will only be "used outdoors due to currents of air in the tunnel."

[Image: The earlier generation Tlaloque 1 robot prepares to roll into the Temple of the Plumed Serpent; image courtesy of Past Horizons].

But how extraordinary it is to read about these and other collaborations between teams of roboticists and archaeologists, and to realize that excavating the past will soon mean deploying teams of remote-sensing robotic machines semi-autonomously flying, crawling, gridding, scanning, squeezing, and non-destructively burrowing their way into lost rooms and buried cities, perhaps even translating ancient languages along the way.

I Just found a quick way to hook up APM2.5 to take photos using transistors .

What we need

2 x npn transistors 

2 x 10K resistors (Rc)

2 x 6.8K resistors (Rb) ( this was sufficient for me to saturate the transistor )
And a small pcb and some wires .

I had a nikon coolpix lying around so I opened it up to access the switches.Carefully remove the
upper cover which covers the switches within .You can just google how you can open it (Be carefull about
the Capacitor which is used by flash , you may get a sting if u touch its leads ).

Find the switch which is just below the trigger of your camera . Check its leads (normally its a
small push switch ) . Check which of its terminals are connected to the ground using a multimeter .
And do check the voltages on the other leads when powered on ( They are normally pulled up and may show you
voltage little less than battery ) .Normally there will be 2 such leads which are not grounded and other two grounded.Connect wires ( blue and purple ) to the 2 leads which are not grounded.One will be for focusing and the other one for clicking . Connect 2 wires to battery +ve and -ve terminal (Red and Brown ) .

So just to check whether all is going well and connections are made proper . You can try connecting one
of these wire to battery ground . If nothing happens try grounding other wire . One of them will
let you focus the camera ( you can see it on lcd ). Just when u get the green square on lcd connect the
other wire to ground while still holding the previous wire grounded . If all connections are proper
,the camera should take a picture.

Now we will have to achieve this with a digital signal from APM .For which we are using transistors as switches to
connect those wires to ground .
Just check the circuit diagram( very simple ).

In the above image the wires i hold go to APM ( brown - gnd ; red (AN2) and yellow(AN3) focus and trigger pins ) .

While soldering make sure you connect both the grounds together the APMs and camera battery's .

Now for the code ( I have attached it with this post ). I took a simple bypass . I used ch6 input to trigger camera overriding the normal ch6 function .So if you plan to use my code you better be sure you are not using ch6 input .You 
can see it in mission planner config screen . Just make sure ch6 function is set to none .
The code that i have added is in the CONTROL MODES tab in function read_trim_switch ( 10 Hz)

/* This part is to trigger camera transistor pins */
static bool trigger_flag_my = false; //flag to keep track once the ch6 switch is pressed
static char trigger_count_my = 0; // to count the number of times it comes to the function to keep track of time . each count represents 0.1 sec .

if( trigger_flag_my ) // if triggered
{

digitalWrite(AN2, HIGH); // focus pin
trigger_count_my++;
if( trigger_count_my > 10 ) // wait till its 1sec
{
digitalWrite(AN3, HIGH); // capture pin
}
if( trigger_count_my > 12 ) // wait till capture input taken
{
trigger_count_my= 0 ; //Reset all variables
trigger_flag_my = false ;
digitalWrite(AN2, LOW);
digitalWrite(AN3, LOW);
}

}
else
{
digitalWrite(AN2, LOW);
digitalWrite(AN3, LOW);

if( g.rc_6.radio_in > 1500 )
{
trigger_flag_my = true ;
trigger_count_my = 0 ;
}
else
trigger_flag_my = false;
}

/// END OF CAMERA TRIGGER

Add this at the start of the function .

And add this to initialise the pins in SYSTEM tab in the function init_ardupilot just below led pin definitions ( just to make it easy to locate in case u want to remove it later )

// setup IO pins
pinMode(A_LED_PIN, OUTPUT); // GPS status LED
digitalWrite(A_LED_PIN, LED_OFF);

pinMode(B_LED_PIN, OUTPUT); // GPS status LED
digitalWrite(B_LED_PIN, LED_OFF);

pinMode(C_LED_PIN, OUTPUT); // GPS status LED
digitalWrite(C_LED_PIN, LED_OFF);

//---------------------------------
pinMode(AN2, OUTPUT); // Cam focus
digitalWrite(AN2, LOW);

pinMode(AN3, OUTPUT); // Cam trig
digitalWrite(AN3, LOW);
//--------------------------------

Once done with the code the last thing to do is hook the ch6 of your Tx to APM
and go to radio calibration tab and check the ch6 value . Make sure you set it up such that when u
switch the value goes above 1500 and when normal its value is less than 1500 .If not you can change
it in Transmitter setup .

Hope it works for you ! Thank you !

What have drones & football in common you could ask... Well, some clever French guys (http://www.deltadrone.fr/) dropped the game ball in front of 20.000 people with their drone. Good initiative to show the wide public drones can be friendly too. Nice model.

Techpod is a special design FPV with hundred of hours of computer calculation and simulation went through during the design stage. With a high aspect ratio glider like wings, it is capable of long flying time. The designer claim for more than 4 hours of flight time with 2 pieces 6S 5000 mah battery in parallel.

I build this plane for aerial photo purpose. I’m looking for a flight time of about 90 minutes. Longer flight time means more battery, thus weight to carry which may affect the quality of flight control.  My current camera ( Canon S100GPS ) battery life may not last more than 70 minutes of continuous shooting at 3 seconds interval.

The build

Kit arrived in double box protection, upon unboxing, I found all the components are neatly pack with plastic bag and no damage. The furnishing of the EPO parts is above average with smooth wings top surface. The fuselage side surface also smooth make this kit looks good.

HobbyUAV web site provide a very detail building video tutorial so I’m not going to repeat here. This is certainly not a beginner kit. Your may face some difficulty if this is your first time building a radio control airplane. If you have some experience under your belt, you’ll good to go.

I highly recommend you watch a few time of the video, lay out all the components and dry fit it to see if you need to sand some parts to get a proper fit. This will also prevent you from fitting the wrong parts at wrong place which is difficult to reverse.

My kit go together well with some sanding here and there. Pay special attention to the T tail structure and make sure the stabilizer is perpendicular to the tail fin.

I don’t like the motor to be permanently mounted to the firewall. I use a motor extension so I can remove the motor easily if needed.

Radio and power set up

Because most of the servo need long extension, It will be a good idea to use heavy gauge (26#) twisted servo wire as your extension wire. If you can do some soldering job, it is good that you make your custom extension wire for neat installation.

You’ll need 6 pieces, preferably digital 9 gram micro servo for all the control surface. You can use a 15 gram mini servo for elevator control if you like it or feel not so comfortable with a micro servo controlling the elevator. I’m using Savox SH 0257 MG with good result.

The recommended motor is Turnigy G10 Brushless Outrunner 810kv but since I have a Turnigy C 4250 700KV motor on hand, may be a little overkill for this plane. I just used it for the initial test flight. I’ll change to some dish type motor like T Motor 4008 340KV in the future. Speed control is 50 A Turnigy ESC. I’m using a external BEC ( CC 10 A BEC ) to supply current for the electronic. The build in BEC from the ESC may not able to handle those long servo wire. An APC 12x6 propeller and 4S 5000mah battery finish the power package.

Wings hold down modification

The default wings hold down method is by clamping the center section with two pieces thick plywood and a long screw. I don’t have much confident with it so I do a simple modification as shown in the picture. Now I’m sure the wings will not give way in any flying condition. The modification is quite simple. I cut two lengths of plastic tube, cut off some foam and glue them into the wings as shown in the picture. Next I insert a 3 mm music wire into one end of the tube, tap and use a 3 mm screw to secure it permanently. The opposite site also use a 3 mm screw but it will be removable  After I plug in the wings, I can secure the wings with the screw from outside.  I have to stretch that the default method should work well as per design, this is just my personal opinion to make it feel more secure.

Test flight

After about two week on and off building, now the moment has come to test flight the plane. As a radio control airplane hobbyist, we always get excited whenever we fly a new plane for the first time.

Double check all the control surface, CG and all wiring connection, a fellow RC buddy lightly toss it into the winds while I have about 70 % throttle and a little up elevator. The plane climb up with authority at this throttle setting. Once reach about 100 meter altitude, I bring it to the end of the runway, make a procedure turn and do a straight and level flight to trim the aileron and elevator.  I just need “some” trim and I am able to let it flying straight and level hands off. The elevator control feel solid and very responsive but the aileron control  feel a little sluggish. I think this is due to the fact that it had a long wingspan. The response of the aileron input is a little slow especially when I want to level out the wing from turning. At time I had to apply full counter input to bring the wing back to level. On subsequent flight I increase the ATV of the aileron and it responds better.

Landing the Techpod is very easy, it has a very good glide ratio and also very graceful low speed handling. Just set up the final approach about 150 meter away and into some head wind with altitude about 50 meter, the plane will glide down gracefully , you may control the descent rate with small throttle input.

For those of you who never fly a sail plane, you may not comfortable to see the wings “ flap “ during flight. The designer had assured us that the wings is plenty strong and the flapping action of the wings is by design. He had a video to show just how strong and flexible the carbon wings tube is.  

One must remember that this is a FPV plane, not a pylon racer. It will NOT handle high speed, high G maneuver well and may cause flutter. Don’t ask me how I discover this.... : ) but I can tell you my plane is still flying.

Overall, I am very satisfy with the performance of the plane in full manual mode. No significant bad habit show up in the test flight. I am also confident that with a proper size motor, the plane will fly equally well in auto mode.

By David Szondy

The arrest of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was carried out, in part, with the help of a remote controlled robot. Such an operation highlights the growing uses of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) in anti-terrorist and other operations. Northrop Grumman Corporation’s CUTLASS robot, developed by its division in Coventry, U.K. is designed to provide remote handling and surveillance of hazardous threats and is intended to replace British Army’s Wheelbarrow robot for bomb disposal.

Demoed in 2007, the CUTLASS boasts a modular design with a three-fingered gripper at the end of a manipulator arm which is engineered for nine degrees of freedom to allow it to operate in tight spots, such as a car interior. It's equipped with six wheels that can carry it over soft and hard terrain in all weather conditions and allow it to creep along at slow speeds for delicate operations or travel at up to 12 km/h (7.4 mph) when speed is required.

Northrop Grumman claims that its ability to accommodate a wide range of payloads, sensors and tools to suit multiple missions allows CUTLASS to operate without the need for a second robot, providing savings of 50 percent when compared to maintaining and operating two separate UGVs over the life of the vehicle.

It also means that CUTLASS can get the job done without having to return to the incident control point for additional tools during operations. The company says this results in a vehicle that can deal with hazardous situation up to four times quicker than other UGVs.

"[The CUTLASS] is more dexterous, cost effective and, as a package, four times faster than any other UGV," said Greg Roberts, managing director, defence and security, Northrop Grumman Information Systems Europe. "The vehicle is already in service across the U.K. and has proven itself to be robust and capable in the most demanding environments. We look forward to exploiting the potential opportunities for exporting this capability into international markets."

The CUTLASS will be exhibited at the Counter Terror Expo that will be at the National Hall, Olympia, London, April 24-25.

Source: Northrop Grumman

Most of photo mapping online services and several softwares as Photoscan use Self-Calibration method for modelling internal geometry of cameras. While this approach is simple and practical, don´t provides the best results because the low convergence and redundancy of a tipical aerial survey.

Atachhed to this blog there is an example of a full field calibration of a Sony Nex 7 with a Sigma 30mm F2.8 (tipical setup in Bramor UAV). Thanks to the large calibration field, sharp pictures were taken with the same focus setup that used when flying (The focussing ring is blocked in Bramor).  If you are lucky enough of own this camera/lens maybe you can try this calibration certificate. All right, for sure, your camera will be slightly different to this, but I dare say that this modelling will be more accurate than that obtained by self-calibration.

Sony%20Nex7%20Calibration.pdf

Hi all, following the project of making specific instructions for each type of aircraft equipped with APM 2.5. Today I present the tests in auto mode executing a mission, this wing x5 has much potential as drones, for video and photogrammetry. the development of these applications www.makedrones.com blog we will develop in the next 30 days

I have been working on improving the TradHeli slowly but surely over the past few months.  One major aspect I've been working on is the ability to use full Pitch and Roll I-term.  Currently in 2.9.1 these are "Leaky" which limits their build-up to avoid tip-overs on the ground.  I have created a robust Take-off detection scheme that allows us to switch over to full I-term (as the multirotors use) for much better dynamic flight.  However, the system must switch back over to "Leaky" I-term once it touches the ground again to avoid tipping over.

I have managed to accomplish this, based largely on the work of Leonard and Randy who provided such a great Alt_Hold controller that if can also quite accurately detect a touch-down.

Another minor part of this is that while the heli is on the ground, I limit the negative collective pitch to less than full negative, so that we do not push the heli hard into the ground.

Here is the video from today using my 450 testbed.  I'm not working on this with my large 600.  Back to the field!

This code exists only in my branch which is based on 2.9.1.  I have not pushed these latest changes yet but will later tonight.

Hello,

In a search to film with a HD camera I made different tentatives with all kinds of materials and devices to avoid the famous "Jello" effect. I tried moongel, I tried elastics with foam, I tried rubber grommets...everything lead to Jello!

I though I would be unable to get rid of it until I got the following idea, inspired from military strategy: not to try to block an ennemy wave at first defence. Rather, build successive defences in cascade : a bit of the attacking wave goes through the first line of defence to the second line; a bit of the bit of the wave goes through the third line, a bit of the bit of the bit of the wave dies on the third line, etc. These cascding lines of defence will utimately get rid of most of the vibrations to the camera. That was the idea, so how to apply this on a quadcopter ?

First decision was to attach the camera gimbal on the bottom plate because I think intuitively that is the best place to start with less vibrations (alternative was to use the sonar mount between two arms, but then I am way to close to the vibrations sources).

First line of defence, the bottom plate

Thus the bottom plate had to be the first anti-vibe line of defence. As shown in the picture below I decoupled this bottom plate from the rest of the frame with 8 M3x20 rubber dampeners (instead of screws):

Second line of defence, transversal booms to hold the camera gimbal:

I purchased a one meter U shape aluminium boom (10mm x 10mm) that I cut in two pieces of the length of the bottom plate plus a few extra inches to hold a camera plate (will be shown in next picture). These two booms are attached in parallel to each other and screwed on the bottom plate with two M3x10 rubber dampeners.

Third line of defence, the camera plate:

The camera gimbal is suspended on a aluminium plate using the two parallel booms. This aluminium plate is attached to the booms with four M3x15 rubber dampeners as shown below,

The extra trick is to keep an extra rigid link between the camera gimbal and the frame. For that I reused an idea that was posted previously on this forum and bought at servocity the famous servo blocks. This is not ideal to avoid jitter of servos in mouvement but this is the best I found until now. Because now the best would be brushless gimbal and that shall be my next project (waiting to do the investment, it is not cheap).

So with all that I did a quick test flight that you can see in this youtube video. This video was not corrected nor transformed. You will see that except mouvements of the gimbal (i flew in stabilize with lots of pitch/roll corrections), the video is absolutely without any Jello.

Mission accomplished.

By the way, the music of the video is a credit for Jake Wells who inspired me.

CU,

Hugues

Our OctaV project is progressing. Now it was time to test the gimball with Gopro. The end result was surprisingly good.

We still have challenges with the basic flight. The amperage is quite high - 2x 20C 4ah 3S lipos are at their limit. We could add some more copper to few spots or good solution could be to go straight from 3S to 6S.

Also the Gimbal needs some fine tuning. On the next test I will put the Nex5 on board!

We've been using the ArduCopter platform at Marshall Space Flight Center for almost a year now.  We started with a 3DR Quad and have several 3DR Hex vehicles.  We're using them to test their capabilities for aerial reconnaissance as well as search and rescue.  This past week we used our Quad with a GoPro Hero3 to film a test flight of the Robotic Lunar Lander.  It was a fully autonomous flight (takeoff, ascent to 100' altitude, transit to loiter position, RTL once filming is complete, and landing).  As you can see from the video, we got some amazing footage from a very unique vantage point.  Thanks to 3DR and the devs for all your help and assistance!

By Alasdair Allan

Building your first quadcopter is almost a rite of passage for anyone interested in DIY drones these days. The availability of boards like the Ardupilot make it a lot easier to get started. However, seven masters students at Queen Mary University of London just raised the bar for the competition. They built a solar powered Quadcopter, which they dubbed Solar Copter.

While there have been numerous solar-powered aircraft, this seems to be the first solar powered helicopter in the world. Based around a unique frame design you can see a lot of potential for surveillance, search and rescue, and long term deployments in areas of the world where the sun shines a lot more than it does back in London.

You can even think further afield at Mars exploration, while prototype Mars aircraft have flow at altitude here on Earth most are aimed at long range exploration. Basing a fleet of light-weight small solar-powered quadcopters which would be launched from a future lander is an interesting possibility.

The project team of Aly Abidali, Jibran Ahmed, Shakir Ahmed, Irmantas Burba, Pourshid Jan Fani, George Kowfie, and Kazimierz Wojewoda hope to keep working on the Solar Copter after they graduate.

(Via the Fast Company.)

Hey all,

With the recent comments on the latest arducopter build and some hesitation to upgrade, I decided to head out and put it through its' paces.  Or in layman's speak, thrash the quad and see what happens.  The day was beautiful and sunny, with a moderate breeze of 30km/h.

I flipped through stabilise, altitude hold and loiter with no problems.  Handling was a dream, super responsive and agile.

So a massive thank you to the devs again for the work they're doing.

HOWEVER...

From a flight planning / safety point of view, I have two flight timers (one set to 10 minutes from battery connect and one set to 10 minutes from power up) and a battery alarm.  For this flight, the timers were set, but I DIDN'T attach the battery alarm as I thought it would only be a shortish flight.  Up and down in under 10 minutes.  Ironically, this is exactly what happened, but not entirely of my control.  The total flight time was 9:30 minutes and ended up browning out and landing rather spectacularly.

This was the first incident after probably 15 or so successful flights and the only thing that needed replacing, was one prop.  When you see the video, you'll understand that's a remarkable achievement. The cause of the flight was really simple - I was going very hard in and against the wind, so more power was drawn.  In other words, pilot enthusiasm or error.  We'll work that one out over a drink.

Due to this, the pre-flight checklist has changed to include ALL safety mechanisms and get my spotter (if available) to double check.

I hope you enjoy the video and please learn from others mistakes and remember to fly safe.

Cheers,
David.

Part one of the title..at under $70 my V959 is cheap, and in this video, it flips. Anyway, I just thought I would share a new adventure!

Alright, part two of the title...I am wanting to make the move up to a bigger quad, and want some advice on what route to take...? There are so many options it seems, and I don't want to make a decision I regret. I have been reading, and pondering, and reading some more, but want to hear some opinions. I am not above building my own, but, I have never built a quad before. Also, I have considered something like the DJI Phantom, but wonder if they are the best bang for the buck. Thanks in advance for any help you may have to offer.

After an hard work  VR Lab team finish the porting of AP_HAL library to VRBRAIN.

Now we start doing first test on Arducopter rev 3.0 and Arduplane 2.71 . 

Emile yet start to do first test on Arducopter rev 3.0 the great news is  that in the next week we start to doing the first test of Arduplane on VRBrain . Our beta tester is Daniele Avagadri . He is member of Virtual Robotix Italia team and have a 12 years of experience on RC airplane.

here info about VR Brain the price start from 150 euro.

http://www.virtualrobotix.com/page/vr-brain-v4-0

Last video doing by Marco Robustini

Here you can find the firmware repository :

http://code.google.com/p/vrbrain

ap_hal project is available in ap_hal_newdir branch.

This is mini site for ready to fly firmware :

http://vrbrain.wordpress.com/

for more info send a mail to : info@virtualrobotix.com

original blog post : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/arducopter-arduplane-and-ardurover-firmware-based-on-ap-hal-libra

Thanks to Emile , Andrew , Pat and the other member of the team for the support to our work and for the ap_hal multi platform code revision.

Best

Roberto Navoni

This T3 round was really quite the thing. As such everybody gets a prize! Chris assures me that the 3DR T shirts are very cool. So far he has failed to produce an image of a bumpy jumper person wearing one to prove that is so.

As ever the trying was not without drama and has moved the code and thinking forward a little for all. That's what makes competitions so good for this community. Its why a hat needs to be tipped to all those brave enough to try.

The winning flight really was stunning from many angles. A great looking cube, very long flight time and all hands off to boot.

Top three prizes goto:-

1   Steve Westerfield,  AutoQuad,   longest loiter in each corner  42 minutes between 3 and 5 minutes at the corners
2   Aerhead,                AutoQuad,   a really great looking cube
3   Richard Boyhan     APM, for trying so hard.

For his efforts Steve receives an APM 2.5, Aerhead and Richard uBlox GPS modules. Many thanks to 3DR for supplying these prizes.

Also entering and receiving a T Shirt for their flights

Rob Lefebvre
Randy
Ted Van Slyck
Bruno Guerreiro
Scott Berfield

The community should raise a glass to these multirotor adventurers!

3DR will reach out to everyone with coupon codes to arrange delivery of their prizes.

From me, thank you all for entering it has restored my faith in the T3 again!

Bruno you legend, three months of RC experience and you submitted this flight.

Scott, sorry we made you crash.

We will announce the next one shortly.

Read all the stories about this round here http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/t3-season-two-the-multirotor-one?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A1136977&page=1#comments

Not sure I have picked the right named  rotor number for this one. I called it a hexadecagon. 

A chap said of an ultralight pilot that I knew after flying over a large body of water (Irish Sea) in a very very dodgy aircraft. "Balls the size of melons and a brain the size of a pea" 

I don't think I would have sat in this, especially as the chap in the cape in the video is driving it!

http://www.suasnews.com/2013/04/22397/hyundais-flying-car-manned-hexadecagon/

Initially I started with this setup:

Initial Setup

Now with top shelf added:

When I attached the top support sheet, removing the receiver from the top of the APM itself, and moving it to the top shelf, my vibrations increased quite a bit.

They went from this:

to this:

I'm thinking that with the receiver on a non-vibration shielded part of the quad now, the vibrations are being carried through the wires to the APM.

I'm going to try a different type of O-ring first, to see if that will have a positive effect on the vibrations. Switching from the red silicone o-ring size 017 to a smaller nitrile o-ring size 015.

Also, in the intial setup I had the APM attached to the base via a direct velcro strap. I've now added some silicon gel underneath the strap so the APM is only touching its supports through vibration dampening gel. 

Now awaiting a battery charge to see how the new setup performs....

A clique of 25 vineyard owners and farmers, always looking for ways to economize, had gathered on a Wednesday in November at an experimental winery owned by the University of California (Davis). There, at 11 a.m., they watched an unmanned helicopter called RMax lift off from a small grassy field. It showered 40 long rows of grapes from 2-gallon tanks mounted along each side of the fuselage, its sprayers pushing the liquid directly onto the crops. A tractor rigged to spew pesticide or fertilizer can douse the same area, just over an acre, in an hour. The drone did it in less than six minutes.

The RMax, built by Yamaha, has been a fixture in Japan since the 1990s. It sprays nearly half that country’s rice crops, part of the Japanese government’s solution to assist its elderly farming population and prevent pesticides from wafting into residential areas. The drones can fly much closer to the crops; the downwash from the buzzing rotor blades helps coat both the tops and bottoms of leaves, unlike more expensive piloted aircraft. American wineries, for now, rely largely on lumbering tractors, which are slowed by challenging terrain.

With 1 million acres of grapes in the United States, it’s a “tremendous opportunity” for the drone helicopter to change the way farmers do business, says Steve Markofski, the new business planner for Yamaha Motor Corp. USA, who attended the demonstration. And wineries are just the beginning.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/what-drones-can-do-for-you-20130411

Hello everyone,

Today I want to share a new initiative that I have, is the creation of a blog where I colacare the instructions step by step how to build drones. instructions will be specific for each type of aircraft, that have ensured that many frustrations with generic information that sometimes requires previous conocimeinto to build a drone. My goal is that if I place specific instructions for each type of drone (eg x5, raptor, skywalker, etc..) this ensures that the learner's curve is reduced, and errors are reduced.

This initiative came about many questions I get from the post that I publish diydrones forum.

Blogs will be in English and Spanish, I apologize if there are mistakes in English, I am using a translator. Will do my best efforts to create this is my blog

http://www.makedrones.com

Any suggestion is welcome.