Drone Download #12: What do Uber and drones have in common?; bee brains; USPS delivery drones; technology meets civil disobedience

To get the Drone Download delivered to your inbox weekly, subscribe here.

Apologies for the recent gap in Downloads. We’ve all had our heads down here, working hard to deliver the best drone experience to you that we can, and last week we were proud to unveil the fruits of those efforts—Solo, the world’s first smart drone—at the NAB conference in Las Vegas. At the end of the week we walked away from NAB with both the “best drone” and “best booth” awards from Videomaker. For us, that incredibly enthusiastic and encouraging reception was far and away the best news of the week—and we’re extremely grateful for it—but it was hardly the only news, as you’ll see below.

(Also: If you just want to see a chimp attack a drone with a stick, we’ve got that in here, too.)

 

Question of the week

Perhaps the most interesting unmanned flight story of the week involved a manned flight: 61-year-old Tampa Bay mailman Douglas Hughes flew a gyrocopter (!)—strapped with 535 letters addressed to US Congressmen—from Gettysburg, PA, onto the lawn of the Capitol Building. It was an act of civil disobedience intended to arrest the news cycle and draw public attention to the issue of campaign finance reform. Hughes apprised officials well in advance of his mission.

Regardless of your feelings about the issue or the method, Hughes’s act raises again the question of no-fly zones and geofencing in Washington, DC—a technological solution that might have unintended consequences of limiting freedoms. Were we to enforce that no-fly zone with mandatory technology—if Hughes’s gyrocopter had been outfitted, for instance, with the same geofencing that DJI applied to all of its quadcopters following the White House drone crash—he wouldn’t have had the chance to execute his nonviolent act of civil disobedience.

As of today, 3DR doesn’t build hard geofence limits into its drones. What do you think about this? In this era of breakneck niche innovation, are companies obligated to use the technology at their disposal to engineer public safety to the best of their abilities (and decisions or agendas), or should we leave such choices up to individual citizens, who then face the consequences of their actions? The fact that no manned helicopter or government authorities forced Hughes to abort the mission (of which they were well aware) seems to be tacit support of his right to exercise his unorthodox nonviolent protest. Should a technology company preemptively shut down what even the authorities themselves would not? The act does raise some serious public safety alarms for DC, but as people from Ghandi to Eugene Debs to MLK, Henry David Thoreau and the suffragettes have shown, civil disobedience can be a powerful, peaceful and effective democratic tool. Should we be concerned that technology might take that tool away?

I’d like to hear from you: roger@3dr.com

And now, the links that matter:

 

Headlines

This year’s Boston Marathon course was declared a “no-drone zone” last week, so the city used technology that would warn Boston Police Department officers when drones enter the airspace above the 30,000 marathon runners. The system’s sensors listened for the sound of drones, and could alert about 40 Boston police officers via email or text message about an incoming drone. (Biz Journals)

Amazon delivery drones could deliver packages in under 30 minutes for just $1. (Seeking Alpha)

But look out Amazon: After your drone delivery research has been delayed by federal government regulations, here comes—drone delivery by the federal government? Diabolical! The US Postal Service is considering a drone delivery option. (The Federal Times)

Uber, Airbnb and drones: What happens when legal uncertainty meets innovation. (Forbes)

 

High Tech

This week, 3DR announced Solo, the world’s first smart drone. (TechCrunch)

NAB? More like in a bee! (Ha?) Simulated bee brains have been used to pilot drones, which could one day be used for automated pollination.

Airware launches drone operating system: “Their vision is that any drone running the Airware platform can be configured, deployed, and run the same way as any other—even if the vehicle itself is a completely different drone build by a different company for another purpose.” (The Verge)

Not motivated to jog? A drone can help: “We’ve shown for the first time that a quadcopter can function as a social companion for joggers, and we know that joggers value that,” the researchers said, adding the finding was a surprise. (CIO)

Great interview with Ana Jain of the Superflux lab, discussing a future where private drones help shape city life. (Center for the Study of the Drone)

Say goodbye to changing batteries. IR-LOCK has just announced its Precision Landing hardware for Pixhawk-based quadcopters. The sensor/beacon combo has been demonstrated to achieve 5-30cm landing accuracy, and is designed to be integrated into drone charging platforms.

University of Zurich team (we partnered with the school in the Pixhawk project) develops drones that self-stabilize without the need for GPS. (Robotics Business Review)

 

Video

We got baboons to fly our drones. This chimp attacks one. Watch closely and draw your own conclusions. (Live Science)

Check out this hilarious and brilliant Craigslist ad for a 2002 Ford Taurus, shot with a drone.

Drone delivering first asparagus stalks of the season in Dutch restaurant PR stunt crashes, burns. Sigh. (Popular Science)

The post Drone Download #12: What do Uber and drones have in common?; bee brains; USPS delivery drones; technology meets civil disobedience appeared first on 3DR | Drone & UAV Technology.

via Drone Download #12: What do Uber and drones have in common?; bee brains; USPS delivery drones; technology meets civil disobedience

PR2 Robot Figures Out How to Make a Latte

Your robot butler is now closer than ever
via PR2 Robot Figures Out How to Make a Latte

Economic growth doesn't create jobs, it destroys them

It’s time to face up to the fact that unemployment does not create jobs, does not reduce inequality and does not solve environmental problems

After so many years of being told the same thing, it is barely surprising that we believe it. Economic growth is good, we are told, and essential to all we do. Growth creates work. Work creates wealth. Wealth closes the gap between rich and poor.

Once we have a stronger economy, the economists say, we can tackle our environmental problems.

Related: European Commission agrees to use social progress tool alongside GDP

Related: We must let go of this ‘trickle-down’ nonsense once and for all

Continue reading...
via Economic growth doesn't create jobs, it destroys them

Solo, the Only Drone That Thinks Twice: The power of two computers

The idea didn’t hit us on the head like Newton’s apple. It didn’t come to us in a dream like “Yesterday” to Paul McCartney. It didn’t fly forth fully formed from Chris Anderson’s head like Athena from Zeus.

In fact, it wasn’t an idea at all. It was just a solution.

When we set out on the path to Solo, we knew the problem that our next drone must solve wasn’t just to make flying easy, it was to make the entire experience of owning and using a drone easy and enjoyable. Effortless flight is no small part of it, but addressing the entire experience is—to state the obvious that wasn’t at first so obvious to us—a much, much bigger task. The more we stepped back and began to realize how much bigger we had to think, the more clearly this demanded a bigger solution.

So, computers.

To be exact, two 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9-powered computers running Linux, one on the copter and one in the controller. And they’re not there just for show. They run the show.

The computer onboard the copter can handle high-end processing during flight, which means Solo can execute highly-advanced and customizable flight scripts that are incredibly easy to set up in real time. For you this means we can deliver real time creation and capture of “the shots you want” (Smart Shots)—which can even be fully automated. When you’re ready, just press “play” on the app and Solo will get the shot for you, like a faithful golden retriever that fetches incredible cinema-quality aerial footage. Simply repeat until you have all your shots. In short, computer processing allowed us to take autonomy far beyond the autopilot.

And because the computers can run all the high-end processing, the autopilot itself (the powerful Pixhawk 2) doesn’t actually have to work hard at all. This means that Solo is much less likely to have a firmware freeze during flight, even while running exceedingly complex scripts. In other words, by putting a companion computer onboard the copter we saw we could greatly reduce the likelihood of the dreaded “flyaway.” 

Helpful brain science-y analogy: You can think of these computers as Solo’s “frontal cortex”—the most advanced part of the brain. They handle all of Solo’s high-level functions, like flight scripts, Smart Shots, HD video transmission and exclusive GoPro® control features. The autopilot—traditionally a drone’s only nerve center—now works sort of like Solo’s “brainstem,” responsible solely for the basic rudiments of flight. By splitting up the work like this, Solo not only dramatically reduces the likelihood of mechanical failure in flight but opens up a world of possibility for adding advanced capabilities and features. Most importantly, it means that flight control is the equivalent of Solo’s reflexes: You now have a frontal cortex available to you; you now have creative control.

The controller’s computer powers 3DR Link, the WiFi connection that delivers crystal clear live HD video straight from the copter to your mobile device, with no cables needed at all. 3DR Link is powerful and secure, strong enough to provide remarkably slim video latency—only 180 milliseconds, with ranges up to half a mile. This same computer powers an HDMI output port on the controller, which you can use to connect Solo to almost any type of screen you can think of—all without losing or compromising the quality of the live HD feed on your mobile device.

The bigger picture

However, in order to consider the entire experience we also had to recognize that drones are flying objects that are working to defy gravity—which is to say that sometimes things can go wrong. We wanted to be sure that we could take care of our customers in any situation, even if the drone itself is gone. To do this, we equipped Solo with its own flight journal: Its processing power enables it to automatically log over 500 flight parameters 10 times per second in flight. And thanks to the computer in the controller, all of these logs are saved in the controller, instead of on the autopilot, as is the case with other drones. This is important to you in that no matter what happens to the copter, even if in a “goodbye cruel world” fit of passion (uncommon to the traditionally dispassionate binary robot psyche) it flies itself into a volcano, you always hold Solo’s “black box” in your hand—if anything goes wrong, you’ll always be able to show us the official record. And to truly ease the pain of a customer who experienced a problem, we even made Solo a little self-aware—able to auto-detect when something’s gone wrong, prompting you to submit a service ticket from the app with a single tap. This uploads the flight data and allows our Support team to work through the problem with the end user.

Finally, and in many respects most importantly, Solo’s high intelligence overhead also allows us to easily incorporate great new features and innovations going forward. These will be available to you in the form of free software updates, future accessories such as optical flow, LED spotlighting and a ballistic parachute system, and even new gimbals from us or third parties, so you can use your Solo to fly different cameras—all without having to buy a new drone. In other words the Solo you buy now isn’t just a one-off product, the first in an ever-expanding series of integers—it’s a platform whose value will only increase as technology improves.

Because the computer technology we’ve baked into Solo allows us to innovate quickly, and because we have the strongest drone developer community in the world, Solo will be advancing rapidly. This means Solo’s smart technology will pay huge dividends for everyone down the road, from developers to companies to consumers. Its intelligence not only allows us to introduce many industry-first capabilities today, but also gives us the ability to unlock future technologies—everything from a next-gen Follow mode to machine vision and true artificial intelligence. And because we keep huge parts of our technology totally open, developers anywhere can contribute to Solo, which is the most compelling and accessible hardware instantiation of 3DR’s industry-leading software platform. And as the platform leader, we can enable small companies with great ideas to work directly with us and our manufacturing partners on developing and launching fantastic new accessories—hence our “Made for Solo” program. Not only does this make it easy for anyone to test and create new technology, it makes it easy for these companies to get onto our retail partners’ shelves and into your Solo.

So, yes: Computers. We’re truly only seeing the very beginning.

The post Solo, the Only Drone That Thinks Twice: The power of two computers appeared first on 3DR | Drone & UAV Technology.

via Solo, the Only Drone That Thinks Twice: The power of two computers

Unlucky Robot Gets Stranded Inside Fukushima Nuclear Reactor, Sends Back Critical Data

A brave little robot has given its non-life to send back critical data on the inside of the damaged reactor
via Unlucky Robot Gets Stranded Inside Fukushima Nuclear Reactor, Sends Back Critical Data

Eyewitness: Hong Kong, China

Photographs from the Eyewitness series

Continue reading...

via http://ift.tt/1HGOn7F

Robotics Featured Articles -Robotic Industries Association - Robotics Online

Without a vision guidance system, robots would be blind, unable to present itself to parts. The increased power of vision guidance systems eliminate the need for expensive fixtures that often must be removed or modified when manufacturers introduce new products or parts.