{"id":534,"date":"2013-01-17T15:24:15","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T20:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/?p=534"},"modified":"2013-01-17T15:27:22","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T20:27:22","slug":"diydrones-3drobotics-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/articles\/diydrones-3drobotics-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on DIYDrones\/3DRobotics Talk by Chris Anderson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[Last night I went to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/Silicon-Valley-Automotive-Open-Source\/events\/90869822\/\">Silicon Valley Automotive Open Source<\/a> meetup where Chris Anderson of DIYDrones\/3DRobotics told his story. \u00a0Here are my notes, slightly rewritten and re-ordered to make more sense if you weren&#8217;t there]<\/p>\n<h2>DIY Drones talk by Chris Anderson, 3D Robotics<\/h2>\n<p>1\/16\/2013, Nokia Sunnyvale<\/p>\n<p>Backstory involving building a Lego Mindstorms autopilot with his kids in 2008 (this is a good story worth watching, e.g. from his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dSrlKi_g_IU\">Maker Faire talk<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>DIYDrones Community<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He fostered the community by &#8220;being dumb in public&#8221;, and letting interested people come and teach him<\/li>\n<li>DIYDrones is now the biggest community of people building drones, ~30K registered members, bigger than any aerospace company<\/li>\n<li>Ground control software written by an IT guy in City Hall in the Outback<\/li>\n<li>Smartphone processors and sensors have revolutionized robotics sensors and components<\/li>\n<li>Powerful, light, small sensors and processors are the &#8220;Peace divided of the smart phone wars&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Arduino<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>people laughed at for the choice because it wasn&#8217;t the most powerful or professional<\/li>\n<li>chosen because it was the most open community<\/li>\n<li>lowered the barrier to entry &#8211; some top contributors are not even programmers or engineers<\/li>\n<li>got people that wouldn&#8217;t have participated if they needed an advanced tool-chain<\/li>\n<li>assumed the hardware would catch up<\/li>\n<li>Drone community should be like a great video game &#8211; easy to pick up, hard to master<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Current models<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>APM2.5 &#8211; universal autopilot for many helicopter and plane formats, GPS guided plus other sensors<\/li>\n<li>PX4 (ARM based) &#8211; enables cutting edge robotics research but easy enough for kids<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;We love the research dudes, but we really love the kids&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Military grade technology at toy prices<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>uses: personal, classroom, disposable, delivery<\/li>\n<li>example &#8211; sending drones with biodegradable bodies on one-way missions to measure glacial pools<\/li>\n<li>feature parity with military (probably exceeded military features by now, plus better ground station), but sacrifice reliability to shed costs (currently ~2 nines for DIYDrones vs 8-9 9s for military, at .01% of cost)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Vehicle configurations<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Favor solid state components and minimize mechanical components<\/li>\n<li>Quad\/hex\/octocopters only have one variable: rotation speed per prop<\/li>\n<li>Solid state copter turning requires 200-400Hz adjustments in rotation speed, mechanical components can&#8217;t do much higher than 50Hz<\/li>\n<li>Mechanical parts are less reliable and more complex<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Flight features<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Geofencing &#8211; the plane becomes uncrashable<\/li>\n<li>Mobile\/tablet interface &#8211; touch interface, direct, focus on the mission<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;FollowMe Box&#8221; &#8211; Raspberry Pi radio tracker &#8211; turn it on, the drone flies to you, follows ~30&#8242; above and behind you, filming, then when the battery is low it flies back to where it started. Get great windsurfind shots!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Free\/paid<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>DIYDrones non-profit community<\/li>\n<li>3DRobotics for profit manufacturer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Manufacturing and production<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>design and manufacturing in San Diego &amp; Tijuana<\/li>\n<li>Tijuana is the Shenzhen of North America<\/li>\n<li>Electronics manufacturing &#8211; you need local production to innovate faster, iterate faster, don&#8217;t tie up capital in supply chain, don&#8217;t wait to sell out big batches, not hamstrung by errors<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Contributor reward structure (pic)<\/p>\n<p>Open hardware business model<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>giveaway the bits, sell the atoms<\/li>\n<li>charge 2.6 BOM<\/li>\n<li>keep ahead of closers by innovating faster, supporting better<\/li>\n<li>90% of features, 0.1% price compared to military<\/li>\n<li>democratize technology low price -&gt; volume -&gt; business<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Open software hardware<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>free fast better R&amp;Dexempt from regulatory barriers<\/li>\n<li>development and support done by customers<\/li>\n<li>avoid FCC approval by selling components to developer<\/li>\n<li>regulations have exceptions for R&amp;D and private use<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>More children flying drones than military service<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>more sold per quarter than entire military<\/li>\n<li>~30,000 ArduPilot modules sold vs ~7k drones in US military<\/li>\n<li>FAA regs: must remain under 400ft altitude, stay within line of site, away from built areas<\/li>\n<li>at that altitude, you get sub-cm photo resolution<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Open source hardware challenges<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>requires architecture of participation (hard to setup)<\/li>\n<li>untested legal questions<\/li>\n<li>reliability is hard b\/c of complex hardware\/software<\/li>\n<li>limited margins (cloners undercut pricing power)<\/li>\n<li>immature collaboration tools (version control for hardware\/design)<\/li>\n<li>piracy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Amateurs can disrupt the biggest industries in the world<\/p>\n<h4>Q&amp;A<\/h4>\n<p>What about suicide bombers &#8211; there are much easier ways to deliver bombs already<\/p>\n<p>What about smuggling drugs? &#8220;Delivering drugs across the border is a solved problem&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Potential uses outside of recreation? Farms are a great place to test commercial uses, hiking search and rescue<\/p>\n<p>What are the main constraints? Simplicity &#8211; they can do anything, but right now you have to enter all the vehicle constraints into the autopilot, there&#8217;s no onboard machine learning to teach the autopilot by flying<\/p>\n<p>What about privacy? Privacy is a technological outcome that has been shrinking. There&#8217;s no national privacy policy, communities don&#8217;t control their airspace<\/p>\n<p>Opportunities for involvement<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>C++ for the hard stuff<\/li>\n<li>C\/Arduino for control\/navigation<\/li>\n<li>python scripting for ground station<\/li>\n<li>swarming &#8211; hard to program, but the hardware is there for drone to drone communication &#8211; all Arduinos are Ross nodes (?)<\/li>\n<li>new raspberry Pi station will have ruby\/html5 interface (coming Feb?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ground station<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>logs data<\/li>\n<li>record\/replay flight info<\/li>\n<li>HuD on virtual horizon or superimposed over video<\/li>\n<li>map<\/li>\n<li>change input from radio, joystick, script, etc<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keeping things simple<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>don&#8217;t tell the machine things they should be able to figure out on their own<\/li>\n<li>be simple but expandable; defining hardware is complex, support is hard<\/li>\n<li>they&#8217;re like PCs with driver problems, not an integrated Apple product, but that&#8217;s the price of being open<\/li>\n<li>maneuverability with as little mechanical as possible<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Last night I went to the Silicon Valley Automotive Open Source meetup where Chris Anderson of DIYDrones\/3DRobotics told his story. \u00a0Here are my notes, slightly rewritten and re-ordered to make more sense if you weren&#8217;t there] DIY Drones talk by Chris Anderson, 3D Robotics 1\/16\/2013, Nokia Sunnyvale Backstory involving building a Lego Mindstorms autopilot with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-fun","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pazgP-8C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}