Blogs

sUAS News Group and the Silicon Valley Chapter of AUVSI, et al are putting on the first of its kind International Small Unmanned System Business Exposition in San Francisco on July 25-26, 2013. What this represents is a leap forward for the rest of the unmanned systems community. Attendees will not see any of the trade show customary fare. Namely, air superiority gray aircraft or militarized systems.

The small business community has long been lost in the sea of DoD vendor offerings at the industry shows, playing nearly third or fourth fiddle. Here, the positive uses will be showcased and highlighted for industry and the public to see and better understand. Offering insights into feeding a hungry world, managing limited resources, sustaining our environs and other use that will help us develop and evolve a more peaceful and inclusive place to live for all mankind. These are the applications that never seem to get their due.

The event will be a two-day symposium with speakers who have first hand experience in the unmanned systems business sector. Slated thus far, Tad McGeer Aerovel Corp, Chris Anderson, 3D Robotics, Patrick Egan, sUAS News, Gene Robinson, RPFlight Systems, Chad Partridge, 2D3 Sensing Dr. Jerry Lemieux, Unmanned Vehicle University, Rory Paul, Volt Aerial Robotics, Matthew Schroyer, Drone Journalism.org

The Unmanned Vehicle University will be offering two-day courses during the exposition on the following topics:

Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle Fundamentals

Unmanned Ground Vehicle Fundamentals

Unmanned Sea Vehicle Fundamentals

Small UAV Design, Operations and Regulation

A portion of the proceeds will go towards educational outreach and also the Global Airspace Integration effort.

Link: http://www.suasnews.com/2013/03/21524/the-small-unmanned-systems-business-expo/

The tilt rotor technology demonstrator is completely electric powered; designed to hover like a helicopter and convert to a fixed wing aircraft in forward flight thanks to its two integrated rotors which can be tilted through more than 90 degrees. The demonstrator performed its first unmanned tethered flight in June 2011 at AgustaWestland’s Cascina Costa facility in Italy and has since performed untethered hovering flights inside a secured area.

Read more on: http://www.agustawestland.com/news/agustawestland-unveils-project-zero-tilt-rotor-technology-demonstrator

A number of years ago while I was doing research for a little story I was working on I stumbled upon DIY Drones and, later, sUAS News.  Hanging out on the DIY Drones forum, building my own amateur UAV and other life-changing events became distractions to finishing my story.  Well, I finally got around to doing just that, i.e. finishing it.

This has very much been a DIY effort from writing the story, to putting together the simple cover, to self-publishing and on to self-marketing.  It has taken a little while, but I have finally received enough feedback that I no longer worry about having embarrassed myself with my first book.

I have never been able to contribute much to this community in a technical sense, but maybe I can provide the entertainment--although I fear that some of my less intelligent posts have already done that.  In any case, using the coupon code below you can download a free copy of my book from Smashwords in any number of e-book formats. While it's intended for the young reader, adults have found it entertaining. Indeed, below is some of their feedback.

Happy reading!

Paul

Coupon Code: QQ26W

Click HERE for book on Smashwords.

Reader feedback:

From Amazon -- 4 stars; "I mainly read to see how well the author did the drone technical details. He did a really good job explaining the workings of the model aircraft drone. I quite liked the book."

From Facebook -- "I read LITTLE EYE IN A BIG SKY and thoroughly enjoyed it! It would be well worth anyone with a young reader in the family to purchase. If the young reader in your family has a scientific bent they will really enjoy it. Has something for the mystery lover as well as a teenage friendship/crush story line. I plan to get it for my great-niece who loves to read and is 13."

I've always been inspired by juz and his videos.  Never knew he was this good of a LOS pilot as well.  Pretty cool to see him doing an indoor flip with such a big quad.  

(Ref.: previous DroneSpeak announcement blog post)

The above diagram, a view of a system model, was developed with the DroneSpeak Vocabulary to illustrate the boundary, major components and interactions of a generic unmanned aerial-vehicle system (UAS).

In the diagram below, we added photos as examples of components of a real-world UAS that has some basic capabilities.

The photo of a custom-designed quadcopter with autopilot is an example of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The Global Positioning System (GPS) is an example of an external, human-made system on which this UAV depends (in part) for navigation. The remote control radio, spare LiPo battery, and a mobile phone constitute an example UAS management system (which could include many more components). And those feet... represent a UAS participant who is responsible for where that UAV goes, and what it does while it is moving through airspace.

If we see enough support for enhancing the DroneSpeak web site, we intend to develop similar system models and views, with vocabularies for six (6) other categories of unmanned vehicle systems (UVS). The hierarchy of DroneSpeak Terms for a UAS can be used now to tag DIY Drones blog posts and discussions.

This blog post has been tagged with: dronespeak, unmanned-aerial-vehicle-system-(UAS)

Have a fabulous day out there!

- John Githens and Doug (R.D.) Starwalt

Where I've already seen...

Dr Vijay Kumar spoke to approximately 50 members of the DC Area Drone User Group and DC Robotics Group on March 12 at iStrategy Labs. Dr. Kumar's talk focused on the evolution of technology surrounding flying robots. Some points from the talk include:

• As people who work with and embrace technology, we as a community need to be vocal advocates of the potential for UAVs and other robots to have a positive impact in people's lives. This is especially important because there are many in our society that are apprehensive about the role robots will play in our future.
• In the past, people focused on how robots would replace human labor. Now the focus is on how robots can work with humans.
• As we see dramatic population growth over the coming decades, indoor farming with robots can be a crucial part of the puzzle for how we will produce enough food to feed billions of new people.
• Dr. Kumar is a strong believer in open source as a driver of innovation and uses open source tools like Open CV in his research. However, he finds that open source projects are often operating at a different tier of cost and precision than much academic research so there is still a role for traditional academic approaches to driving science and innovation.

DC DUG and the DC Robotics Group would like to thank Dr. Kumar for generously taking the time to speak with us and answer so many of our questions. We are excited to continue following his research and other work as he continues to shape the future of robotics and technology.

This team entered this at the fun South by Southwest DroneGames that I was at this year, and one won (thanks for the catch, Martha) a special "cultural award" for best meme-surfing.  You can see some of the other DroneGames contestants and winners here. 

From the wrapup:

Who says drones have no personality? At this year’s Drone Games, drones danced the harlem shake, responded to humans chicken dancing, and rebooted other dancing drones.

Team GroupOn won the event with their hand gesture controlled drone. The team at Eyes and Ears Entertainment built a drone that was so awesome, it inspired the judges to invent a new award just for them.

Here’s what the five teams built. Check out photos of the Drone Games on our Facebook page here.

The Drones

1) Austin based hackers Vitor and Dave Massey built a drone that flies higher when you flap harder. When Vitor and Dave flapped their “chicken wings” in front of a Kinect, the drone climbed.

2) The second team built an Arduino drone that uses a sonar sensor to map the room.

3) The folks from Eyes and Ears Entertainment, makers of the Twilio powered A$AP Rocky call-in hotline, built Copter Wolf, a drone that does the harlem shake.

4) Team Groupon built a drone controlled by a leap motion controller which allowed them to control their drone with simple hand gestures. With some slick lines of code, they had their drone in the air in no time.

5)Team Rackspace successfully unveiled their drone code-named “Project Yada Yada.” They programmed their drone to reboot the other sonar scanning, harlem shaking, chicken dancing drones.

Vice Magazine’s Drone even stopped by the Drone Games to say hi.

As someone who got my start in drones with Lego Mindstorms, I can appreciate the work that went into this. Must watch. 

From MAKE:

NXTLOG user hknssn13 built this amazing paper airplane machine. My favorite part is the 4th stage, where four linear actuators make the final folds in the airplane. It looks sick when the entire assembly rises up! The project uses 2 NXT microcontroller bricks, 5 servos, 10 DC motors, pneumatics, infrared, and a bunch of sensors.

Welcome back to my build log/experiences with this project. 

After playing around with and figuring out where to put the various bits I went on to add the XBee headers, powercable and 3 pin RX header to the PX4IOAR: 

At this point I will skip further as the assembly is well detailed in pictures on the PX4 website. I would add that getting the spacers in between the PX4FMU and IOAR is not entirely simple without 3 or more hands, but just fiddle in the white spacer first, then push down the screw through the FMU, one by one is probably one of the easier ways to do it. 

Here is what you end up with after assembly: (zippo again for size - the quad is tiny!)

Ok, now we need to get this all fitted into the EPP foam body donor of the AR Drone, including the GPS and the FLOW. 

Bottom view (I know the battery is a bit incorrect, I took only one pic of this)

In the above picture you can see both the cutout for the battery as well as that for the flow unit. I am not 100% sure yet that the sonar will not have issues, but I hope not. Would not want to mount it any lower as the lens will poke out then and strike ground if it comes down hard. 

Topside GPS mount closeup, as you can see I cut out a flat plateau first, and then carved a smaller space in the middle for the cable and the chip etc on the bottom of the module:

It's ALIVE!!! Look at the pretty lights! 

Next up at this point is to test everything together, get the startup script correctly set up etc, plus installing the FrSky receiver when my FrSky DR 4-II arrives. 

Sharing some pics etc from my PX4FMU/AR Drone build. 

I got the AR Drone carrier to be able to fly the PX4FMU inside to test small things whenever, plus the AR Drone airframe is very well suited to packed urban environments like where I live. 

I do also plan on using the PX4FMU for other airframes, but it seemed sensible to get all the software bits working the way I want them to before I attempt to put the FC on an airframe I am unfamiliar with that may introduce it's own issues. 

The components of the build: 

AR Drone 1.0 (all control electronics and cameras removed)

PX4FMU

PX4IOAR 

PX4FLOW 

uBlox LEA-6 3DR GPS 

Digi XBee Pro (will be testing different radios)

FrSky DR 4-II PPM (not in pictures, yet to arrive)

The goodies arrived in a small box: (zippo for size)

Here is the patient awaiting transplant next to the battery I will use: 

Whats in the box?! 

Just to detail some of what I did not expect: 5 -> 6 position DF13 cable included with PX4FLOW, also correct GPS cable included with PX4FMU. 

Also included stickers with PX4 logo, plus branded micro SD card and reader: 

At this stage I tested the gear I could, so after toolchain installation, setup, etc I got the latest firmware sources, built it and flashed onto PX4FMU, and then tested the PX4FLOW through QGroundControl. 

Now lets get to work, first we need space for the battery: 

Then figure out where and how to place the components + some more carving done: 

This is continued in next post as I cannot add more pics to this one :-) Co Be Continued...

It's my turn to give back! As a way of saying thank you to all of you who have helped me along the way, I'm going to focus the next dozen or so Beginner to Expert videos on the APM!

I've been doing free "Beginner to Expert" videos over the last few months where I focus on a single principle and do a tutorial or a how-to that hopefully, will help others along in the hobby.  The APM videos are specifically aimed at helping those who are brand new get to where you guys are: experts!

Your feedback would be very helpful as I make the videos.

Thank you again for your help!

Check out the dedicated page: http://www.mygeekshow.com/beginnertoexpert/topics/tutorials/Introduction_to_the_APM_Ardupilot_Mega.html

Bunnie Huang's seminal book "Hacking the Xbox" is now a free PDF, released thus by the author in honor of Aaron Swartz. "Hacking the Xbox" is the "Our Bodies, Our Selves" of reverse engineering -- a brilliant and accessible text setting out the case for and the practicalities of reverse engineering and taking control of your devices.

More here: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/11/hacking-the-xbox-free-in-hono.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

This could be our sister site ;-)

DIYRockets is a global space company helping humanity establish a civilization in space by building an open space frontier. ​

Our mission is to lower the cost of space exploration as much as possible by generating extremely low-cost knowledge and technology through open sourcing and crowdsourcing. We believe in harnessing the talent and resources of all to build a democratized space industry.

More here: 

http://www.popsci.com/technology/gallery/2013-03/check-out-rhinestone-covered-drone-replica?image=0

A microdrones md4-1000 UAV has been used in the filming of a high-end documentary about the big wild animal migration from the Serengeti to the Masai Mara.

Microdrones has released a 'making of' video detailing the project:

I was browsing hobbyking and saw the advert of the new transmitter

9XR Standard Features:
• 8 Channel PPM/9 Channel PCM
• Full Ball Bearing gimbals
• Adjustable Stick Length
• Digital Trims on all Primary Axis
• 16 Model Memory
• Assignable Switches
• Freely Assignable Channel Mixes
• Graphical Dual Rate and Exponential
• Sub Trim and Travel Adjust
• Flaps and Differential
• Throttle Hold
• Supports Heli/ Aero/ Glider Model Types
• Programming Templates Based on Model Type
• Supports M1, M2, M3, M4 stick modes
• 128 x 64 backlit Liquid Crystal Display
• Built in JR & Futaba Trainer Ports
• PPM & PCM Output
• JR Form Factor RF Modules (Orx Dsm2, Orx Open LRS 433Mhz etc)
• Programmable Timers
• Low Voltage Warning and Buzzer
• Supports 3s Lipo (Required)
• 9XR Firmware Pre-loaded
• AVR ISP Interface
• Internal 2.4GHz Antenna

The ISP interface is going to make this very interesting.

http://www.turnigy9xr.com/

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__31544__Turnigy_9XR_Transmitter_Mode_2_No_Module_.html?gclid=CLqwl8G99bUCFUbKtAodNWoA6A

Building a strong UAV.

I added a cut off switch was fitted, the xt60 at the rear.

I glued a dean plug with e proxy to the wing and with glue sticks glued the airspeed sensor to the dean plug.

I melted the middle bar so I can insert a 3300 mah 11.1v battery and I added the fpv equipment in the middle.

A long time ago...

When computers were large...

I build a plane, called the Primus. But this was not the first Primus, first gone forever.

And second...Second crash too.

So, time to build Primus again, third reincarnation?

After previous plane all look really small.

What mammi says? Son, always check with a dry fit!

Coincidence? Glue it!