Drones That Anybody Can Pilot with a Phone | Hacker News Reader

Drones That Anybody Can Pilot with a Phone

wired.com

11 pointssk2code10 comments

Drones that came with an iOS/Android app have been available for around two years. So the only USP here is that ex-Google employees made another one "me too!" Good for them, but nothing revolutionary going on here.

> Good for them, but nothing revolutionary going on here.

The article is hindered by the fact that the author doesn't appear to be familiar with what's on the market already, so he doesn't focus exclusively on the right things. Watching the embedded video introducing the tech, it's clear that they're working on optical flow algorithms that will allow a drone to autonomously avoid obstacles and (eventually) navigate in GPS-denied environments without heavy and expensive sensors. It's true that there are other people working on it, but no one in the commercial market at least has come anywhere close to solving this problem. I'm excited by the possibilities this capability would open up.

This is about better software not new capabilites. Think GMail vs Hotmail not Tesla vs GM.

We've been doing this since 2010 at www.robots-everywhere.com although it has to be an android phone. The software and even the schematics have been creative commons'd since 2012, too (they're on the wiki). We demoed at Google I/O 2010.

Wired has been notified of this over the years and consistently failed to report it.

Are you working on sense and avoid? How is it going?

Pretty well. Amazing what you can do with $5 ultrasound detectors, if your software is clever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk-H--e6PUs

The use of phones to control devices like this is kind of old news .. what I'd be interested in more is a kit you can use that will turn your average iPhone into a flying drone itself .. bolt on some wings/rotors, charge up the batteries, and let it loose. Seems to me that is an accessory whose time has come .. perhaps its out there on the horizon somewhere already, who knows?

EDIT: It IS! This is what I want in the iPhone/drone department, next:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhv7qmo63D4

(EDIT2: D'oh, looks like its CGI .. still, a man can dream..)

I've been playing with using Ubuntu phone as a brain for drones and robotics. People have been doing the same with Android for a while. There are lots of Arduino boards that communicate with Android either over bluetooth or OTG USB.

Sounds great .. have you got anything up online about how you're using the Ubuntu phone for this? I'd love to participate somehow .. I'm a long-time flying-thing builder (3 decades now) and to me this seems like a very ripe opportunity for someone to disrupt the drone world. Of course, there is an ulterior motive: getting people to launch their phones into the wide blue yonder, yay! :)

not yet, you can ping me at info (at) londonhelicam dot co dot uk

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