The Grasp Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania developed a quadcopter with a robotic arm, that is able to “grasp”, like an eagle does.
The grasping action was successfully tested to a speed up to 3 m/s (7,2 Km/h).
In Thomas More College in Belgium an “experiment” was made to employ a little personal drone, a DJI Phantom equipped with a GoPro Camera for the surveillance of students during exams, as shown in the following video:
The technology at the moment suffers from a number of limitations: Continue reading Drone for class surveillance in school during exams, an efficient technology?
ArchAerial, a young company that specializes in the use of multirotors for mapping purposes, with a focus on archeological research and excavation sites, has published an interesting video on the possible uses of quadcopters in a restaurant environment , in collaboration with Swift’s Attic, a nice restaurant apparently open to innovation and new technologies, located in Austin Texas.
In the video, the little custom made multicopters from ArchAerial are shown performing a variety of tasks such as serving at the table:
slicing vegetables:
Continue reading Kitchen Drones in action – Multirotors support in running a restaurant
Italian Police have started a program to use multirotors for surveillance and law enforcement purposes in the city of Turin.
The drones – quadcopters in the available videos – are provided by the Italian/Swiss company Aerial View.
Click on the image below for the full story and the video on the Euronews website:
Here’s a statement from Omar Morando, Aerial View pilot:
“All the drones have a transmitter that sends in real time the video signal from the camera to a ground station, where there is a HD monitor that can visualise what the camera is recording. Besides you can see the same pictures with special glasses which have inside a micro-monitor. When you wear these glasses, you have the same sensation as you would watch a 42-inch monitor”
Source: Euronews
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Received a couple of days ago the SFC4410-1 Quad H Airframe from Safeflight Chopters. It is a quadcopter frame designed mostly with security in mind. Here’s a picture of the mounted Safeflight quadcopter from the website:
and some action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgxGYE6gloc
I had noted this frame a while ago, made a post on it, and placed an order. Since I live in a heavily populated area, the idea to be able to fly a quad in a city park, without worries about the propellers cutting something they should not, is very attractive and worth a test.
In this model the propellers are entirely caged in a plastic structure, with a strong nylon net above and below each propeller.
After flying the mini h quad for a while, the structure looks quite big, it can be virtually fitted in a square with approximately 67 cm edges. Each of the 4 plastic circles has a 26,5 cm internal diameter and 33 cm external diameter.
The frame feels extremely lightweight. It is made of molded light plastic, similar to the one that you can often find inside consumer items boxes, to shape the inside of the box so as to fit the various components of the product. This plastic is however strategically reinforced in key places, like the motor mount for instance
and the upper and lower frame components that are reinforced with carbon bars.
Very lightweight overall. How will it hold crashes? We might well check this out soon 🙂
The purpose of this post is to share some very first shots of components during the unboxing. Build details and more photos will be posted while construction advances.
Here we go with another exciting nine minutes video by Arendatorovnet. The quad appears to be a TBS discovery pro with apparently standard DJI equipment (ESC, motors, arms).
A video transmitter with a linearly polarized antenna is visible on the front of the quad, whose brand and frequency remains to be identified/disclosed. A we have already discussed here, the tech specifications of the video equipment are a puzzle as the pilot appears to be flying long distances and down roads under loads of electrical cables without loss of the video link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roYxWfv663I
The video promotes the copter.mobi link for aerial video service. The link actually points to the Arendatorovnet youtube channel, click to check out.
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According to this report from seacostonline.com, on your next Phantom fly away you could have a full police department to the rescue. Just ask.
A Greenland resident alerted police that he suddenly lost control of his DJI Phantom quadcopter. The personal drone flew away carrying, you had guesses it, a GoPro camera attached. Should the quadcopter be recovered it would be nice to see the full flyaway video recorded by the Phantom, finally free from the chains of the owner’s radio commands.
The police asked residents to be on the lookout of the flown away quad. Flying the quad was not done illegally, so possibly it could be returned to the owner after rescue. Indeed Police Chief Tara Laurent said Thursday that “He can’t locate it, so we’re trying to help him get it back”.
Local 6 found a drone that was hovering over central Florida and then crashed on the ground. It appears to be a DJI F330 quadcopter with a NAZA flight controller with GPS.
The quadcopter had a camera GoPro attached to it apparently with generous footage inside. This provided clues on the flight activities of the quadcopter and, as it happens, on the actual owner of the quad.
The video below reports this interesting story by Local 6 and some examples of the footage recorded from the quadcopter.
The video features an interview with the pilot, who comes out as a nice guy passionated with multirotors. In short, one of us. He explains that his only purpose was to take some nice footage to upload on youtube. Local 6 in my opinion is “pumping” an otherwise ordinary quadcopter crash to make a story out of it and point a big accusative finger on personal drones, as if they were mainly used for voyeuristic purposes, which indeed is not the case.
Using a quadcopter with such purposes, by the way, is not that easy. They are quite noisy by nature, not so discreet, and the carried cameras are in most cases wide angle cameras not really good for taking footage with voyeuristic interest. Not that this could not be done in principle, by selecting particular gear for the video footage, but it is technically far more complicated than it might seem to an inexperienced average person expressing his opinions on the matter. Hopefuly reports like the Local 6 above will not lead to issuing over-restrictive legislation on our nice hobby whose main purpose is to have fun and take some special video from an original perspective.
Check out the original article at clickorlando
After the reports on swarm of bees attacking a quadcopter and the controversial relationships between dogs and quadcopters/multirotors, we now have a clear case of a group of birds partnering to attack and take down a DJI Phantom quadcopter.
This is documented in the video below, by youtube user Buddhanz1, that indeed ends with the crash of the Phantom after a strong hit by a bird from above:
This video contributes to increase our knowledge about the possible animal species – quadcopter/multirotors interactions and relationships. These interactions should be probably taken into consideration on planning drone delivery services such as Amazon Prime Air or the recently announced DHL quadcopter delivery services for urgent goods and medicines. Should researchers who are developing these aerial delivery services consider adding some devices to deter various animal species, including at least dogs and birds, from attacking or approaching the flying machine, in order to provide a secure and undisturbed delivery of the ordered goods? This might well be an important evolutionary step that the present generation of multirotors will have to face in order to be safe from animal attacks.
As a very basic first step, what about some camouflage like the following (just a joke here)? Might make birds more friendly (hey, it’s one of us..) or more aggressive (hey, a big bird we are not familiar with..). Testing and research required 🙂
Here’s another interesting example of bird attack on a quadcopter. In this case it looks like the bird had excellent motivations, as the quad was really flying very close and over the bird’s nest. The attack of the bird in this case is just an example of excellent parental care and protection of the brood.
The pilot and maker of the video above recognizes that he was disturbing the birds and states he won’t do this again, which looks like a great idea. Still interesting to see how birds likely perceive multirotors as other, possibly dangerous, big birds, and feel in competition for the control of their aerial space.
We have been discussing in a recent post the “controversial” relationship between dogs and quadcopters.
I came across a special video that documents the interaction of quadcopters with another species, the honeybee:
In the following video a big swarm of bees repeatedly attacks a quadcopter during a flight. What triggered the reaction? Possibly the quadcopter casually encountered the swarm and the blades caused some casualties that were not appreciated by the bees. The bees attack the quad twice. After a moment in which they seem to be gone, back they are with full force.
As user MsMzphit commented on youtube, this is un-bee-lievable!
With the exponential diffusion of quadcopters and other personal drones, we’ll probably witness more quadcopter-animal interactions in the future. We’ll keep an eye on those as they are also part of the game.
