Drone Flies Into an Active Volcano [video]
dronehire.org
dronehire.org
Tangential stupid question:
Obviously there's been a ton of buzz lately (and innovation) in the drone space.
What's the big technological driver that's allowed / caused this to happen? I don't know the details of the internals but it seems that the tech has been around for a while (radio controlled planes, servos, helicopters, smallish cameras, etc.).
Of course, you're right that powerful computers are needed. But it's more about miniaturization for weight purposes.
True.
> which in turn means a fairly high-capacity battery.
Not true.
A microcontroller CPU is good enough. Take a look at the KK2.1 flight controller.
https://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__49254__Hobbyking...
Its brain is an ATmega644, which only requires 240µA @ 1.8V, 1MHz, according to the spec sheet.
http://www.atmel.com/devices/atmega644.aspx
You do need energy-dense batteries, but all that energy goes into the rotors.
With them you can build a device which is lightweight enough to fly for tens of minutes, and can easily orient itself. This lets you control it with high-level commands. You can say "fly there, face north, stand still", something you can't usually say to a traditional helicopter.
Makes sense. Not one single big thing (i.e. AWS for web companies), but a really great example of one industry benefitting and emerging because of cost improvements and advances in a different industry.
I, for one, continue to be excited about our drone overlords.
For example, you can buy a quadcoptor that fits int he palm of your hand for less than $40:
http://www.amazon.com/Estes-4606-Proto-Quadcopter-Black/dp/B...
Just like with this drone, besides eliminating some safety concerns we eventually will eliminate the other costly part, not having enough time to do all we want. With enough drones there won't be much we cannot do for time, just money will come up to the forefront.
Batteries with high energy:weight.
MEMS sensors (thanks, nuclear weapon stewardship programs) http://mems.sandia.gov/
Cheap, open-ish, powerful SoC microprocessors, and the community of hackers (lots of help, and easy tools that lowered the learning curve).
Development of better "linear" circuits like advanced brushless motor controllers and chargers.
Growing robust hobbyist electronics tinkerer marketplace.
Maybe cheap 3D printing too, making prototyping easier/faster/better/more fun.
As with most things, several things had to come together in order for this to happen. A probably incomplete list.
1) Lithium chemistry batteries - unlike Nickel, Cadmium, or Lead chemisty batteries, Lithium batteries are have a lower weight per watt-second than the others.
2) Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) - which is a technique for building a mechanical system (like a balance beam) using the same processes that create integrated circuits. This opened up developing accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers where the sensor and the conditioning circuit were all in the same silicon die. That hugely lowered the cost of such things, and has evolved to the point of providing 9 degree of freedom systems that are on one, or two inexpensive chips.
3 - Cheap 32 bit Micros - Emergence of inexpensive 32 bit microprocessors with DSP like features. The ARM Cortex M series in particular. Even with a cheap inertial sensor you need to process it fast enough and with enough precision to act. DSPs can do this but they are complex, difficult to program, and development tools are expensive. 32 bit ARM processors are easily engaged by high school students using off the shelf free tools.
4 - High performance MOSFETs (low Rds(on) resistance), cheap hall effect sensors - these allowed people to build brushless motors with atonishing power to weight ratios. From CD-ROM spindle motors putting out 1/2 HP for electric planes to 15W motors the size of pager motors which are quite light weight.
Of course that all of this stuff is light weight gets the weight down to the point where you have enough power to lift it, and the integration gets the costs down to where you can build something on a small budget (a few hundred dollars, well within the budgets of active modelers)
also, i'd love to know what the propellers are made of.
If it was me trying to film that close to a volcano, i'd simply use better lens :)
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1013324-REG/dji_part3_...
That said, while assembly and setup is mostly trivial (the hardest parts are basic soldering and dealing with some open source configuration GUIs for some flight controllers), figuring out what to buy and where to source it is pretty challenging, especially for a first build.
It's still a little bit wild west in that you can tell the companies are still targeted at selling to RC hobbyists. The Phantom is good in this regard as it's ready to fly, but if you want first person view (FPV) that's still a chore (there are a ton of options and it's pretty much up to searching forums for people who have strong opinions on everything). I'd like to just toss some money at a company that provides a complete FPV solution along with up to date and easy installation instructions... Alas.
> isn't lithium more prone to failure on higher temps?
Typical props are ABS plastic or Nylon. I suppose you could make them out of a higher performance plastic but I appreciate that they are cheap (I replaced a number of them learning to fly my quad copter)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkQ9eB7M7iQ
This video purports to help prevent that from happening, though it's not guaranteed to prevent your $1000 drone from making a break for it.
I wonder how many rotors they went trough the entire lifespan.
Hobbyists must take great care to operate their drones safely, and companies should assume some liability for runaway situations like this if they ever result in injuries.
Warning, pictures of injuries:
[1a] https://www.google.com/search?q=quadrotor+injury&tbm=isch
[1b] https://www.google.com/search?q=multirotor+injury&tbm=isch
[2] RC helicopter fatalities: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2413231/Roman-Piroze...
BRB attaching circular saw to pigeon
Also of note, winds aloft are often not the same as winds on the ground. Given top speed on these guys is around ~20mph, any wind above that and you've got a fly-away. Again, definitely doesn't account for all fly-aways, but I would venture that it does explain some.
EDIT: Assume only a visual feed was available, no audio.
That's a really broad claim. DO you have a source for this statement?
In this vein there's an amazing line from Man on The Moon when Kaufman refuses to let canned laughter be dubbed over his show: "That's dead people laughing! You know all those people they recorded are dead by now, right!?"
I get that techno is supposed to make you feel pumped and all but it distracted me way too much. Now had it been say Firestarter or something at least mildly related maybe but I like that song already. I don't mind it when I'm watching something like a compilation of stunts or whatever.
First, music is a very personal and subjective thing. There's a vanishingly small chance of a video having a song that causes me to discover a new artist that I enjoy, and a large chance I will be annoyed and immediately mute the video.
Second, and more importantly, using copyrighted music makes the video much more likely to be inaccessible on YouTube on mobile devices and tablets.
For drone videos in particular, of which I watch a lot, I vastly prefer just using the audio straight from the camera. Personally, I cut 12 decibels or so, to avoid rupturing the eardrums of viewers with headphones.
It came to mind due to the airborne / hostile environment combination...
In all I would propose fire as a viable way to kill it with.
Maybe it would have been better without sound, but calling something "awful" or of "poor taste" just because you don't like it is a bit much, especially for something as subjective and personal as musical taste.
I only mentioned it since I've recently seen a few wonderful videos ruined by the "wrong" type of music. I understand music is subjective, but if you've got a magnificent piece of video, it's just a shame to edit in a sound track to try to communicate how cool it is. Case and point, fast 80's music background music, which generally tells me the editors really miss the 80's. This particular video IMHO would have been much better with a more muted background noise level or at least a background where the peaks coordinate with the video (yes, being an video editor in my past life I know how time consuming that is).
This video was quite amazing to me. Hence I assumed the accompanying track to be in poor taste given the visual experience. I apologize if I have offended sensibilities by comparing glitch mob to dub step or techno, I shall promptly report to the closest rave to get back in touch (I think I feel something... Not).
FYI, your argument is ad hominem and hardly detracts or adds to my original observation (Wikipedia and HN discussion guidelines should help enlighten you on ad hominem argumentation if you happen to be out of touch with what that may mean)
On a side not, damn $900 and it can fly 22 minutes. That sounds very little, I hope this things will improve soon they sound amazingly fun!
As for $900 - it survived getting way too close to an active volcano... this is good stuff.
Actually, the Phantom 2 is said to go 25-30 minutes, but perhaps that's without payload.
This fellow went all-out to get 97 minutes: http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/my-97minute-06second...
How are the images collected? Is it streaming while the drone flies, or do you have to get the drone back "alive" to retrieve the data from it?
How do you control the drone, that is, do you get a first person view of the drone while you control it, or do you have to go with looking at it in the distance?
An operator will usually have two cameras, one that records high-quality video to an onboard SD card, and another camera for streaming FPV.
Educated guess here, but the article says it's a GoPro camera, so they probably have to get the drone back alive and download the video from the GoPro.
On the other hand, wireless HD video streaming isn't that hard to do, especially in remote areas like volcanoes where the 2.4GHz band is pretty much all yours. To do better out of line-of-sight it makes sense to use both a fast 2.4GHz radio and a more reliable but slower 433/900 radio and buffer the video on the drone if the 2.4GHz radio drops.
But that isn't going to be as cheap as just strapping a GoPro on one of these Phantoms.
But, it's easier to make a radio using lower frequencies. In the 70 cm band (400~MHz), you can get some ground-wave propagation. But the overall channel size is smaller. With 2.4, its Line of Sight only.
In all honesty, the ideal setup is a low frequency (144MHz or lower) for command and control, with a higher frequency video transmitter. No sense in sending every bit of data down the same pipe.
Source: Me, KC9JEF
Yes, but bandwidth = speed, so all else equal, a wider allowed bandwidth produces greater speed.
> In all honesty, the ideal setup is a low frequency (144MHz or lower) for command and control ...
Maybe in a perfect world without anyone else competing for the frequencies. But even without competing uses, higher frequencies have reduced noise problems -- as you go up in frequency, thermal noise declines, so smaller transmitter powers become acceptable (or the same power produces more reliable communications).
But then there's the line-of sight problem, which gets worse at higher frequencies.
Note about radio control that, over decades of time, the command & control frequencies have been going up. There's a good reason -- the original 27 MHz scheme was unworkable for multiple reasons, but one of them was limited bandwidth.
That's not quite true. It's Bandwidth + encoding = speed . And there's tons of digital encoding schemes: ASK APSK CPM FSK MFSK MSK OOK PPM PSK QAM SC-FDE TCM for starters. And those would allow you to pick up and decode using any old computer running a HDTV usb capture card that can go into raw mode.
> Maybe in a perfect world without anyone else competing for the frequencies.
Nobody would bat an eye if I was to start doing UAV control over 145.50-145.80 with a 20KHz bandwidth . I'd just hop on the local repeater and announce that is what I was doing, and have a radio listening in priority mode to it. If I heard of any anomalies, I'd shut it down and investigate what's going on.
And I have no LoS issues and 2M usually has a nice noise floor. Obviously that doesn't quite apply at night, but just stay vigilant in not harming others.
> Note about radio control that, over decades of time, the command & control frequencies have been going up. There's a good reason -- the original 27 MHz scheme was unworkable for multiple reasons, but one of them was limited bandwidth.
Tubes and early silicon made access to the lower frequencies tenable. Of course the lower frequencies will fill up first. So, it does make great sense, for higher bandwidth using services, to use high frequencies. That's why I said the video could be on the 2.4 GHz spectrum, whereas the command can be on 144MHz.
I'd also consider going lower, making AM more usable. For command frequencies, NOT having capture* is a great deal. That's why control towers mainly use AM and digital modes/CSMA variant.
*Capture is an FM phenomenon, where the strongest FM signal that hits a receiver is the only signal the receiver can hear. The receiver is literally captured to that station. AM does not have that, and what you hear is the jumble of every station in range. Just tune at night on AM and you can hear this.
Not sure about that distance. (I didn't see the video) The GoPro opens a wi-fi connection.
If you want a technical term, I think it's called "sample bias".
Teleimmersion gear + a drone like this = ?