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Picture drawing lines in 3d space in something a little more sophisticated than SketchUp, and then having the drone follow those paths. What's tricky about that

Picture drawing lines in 3d space in something a little more sophisticated than SketchUp, and then having the drone follow those paths. What's tricky about that? Indoors you have no weather, and could use a beacon system to pinpoint location.

upbeat_general 5y ago
There’s so many issues involved. Beacon systems can be used (but might not work well in metal enclosures like in the video). Just accurate trajectory following is very difficult in itself depending on the speed/accel/turning. The cars in the video were moving and so the drone had to be time synced. Same with the stuff inside the factory.
dwiel 5y ago
Do you have a beacon system you have used that you have in mind?
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  An array of active IR cameras in fixed, known positions, plus IR reflector markers on the UAV works well out of the box over ranges of a few meters. Eg. Vicon. Same tech as motion capture for movies. I don’t have experience using it in volumes as large as the video, but in moderate sized lab space it works very well, and at high frame rates. The trick is to invert the problem and have the active sensors off-board and the robot is the (reflected energy) beacon.
  - bri3d 5y ago
    How do you propose you use outside-in to fly through an operating robot? There are too many sources of occlusion for off the shelf outside-in solutions to work at all in this video.
    - robotresearcher 5y ago
      I’m describing an indoor UAV positioning system that works well, not necessarily for this exact project.
hyperbovine 5y ago
This is the platonic ideal of an HN post.
- smallerfish 5y ago
  And this is the typical dismissive rebuttal of an HN post. They built a factory using a high degree of automation in a 3D space - i.e. they have a significant staff of automation engineers. Intel has been doing tight formation drone light shows outdoors (in weather) since at least 2014, if not earlier. Positioning drones precisely enough (i.e. within N centimeters) is therefore objectively possible if you have the right feedback system (and as a sibling comment points out, IR sensors could work for that). Offload all the processing to a computer rather than the drone, and it isn't an insurpassable problem. A small team of engineers for a few months is <$1m, which for a marketing campaign this splashy is nothing. Granted, per one of the sibling comments they did use an FPV pilot for at least some of the shots, but there's nothing stopping them from having automated other parts of it.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    yeah or it could take a week of planning a week of shooting and a week of editing with a crew of people that make drone videos for a living… they’re not pulling automation engineers off of their projects to work on something completely unrelated for a one-time promo shoot, especially not for an entire month

upbeat_general 5y ago

There’s so many issues involved. Beacon systems can be used (but might not work well in metal enclosures like in the video). Just accurate trajectory following is very difficult in itself depending on the speed/accel/turning. The cars in the video were moving and so the drone had to be time synced. Same with the stuff inside the factory.

dwiel 5y ago

Do you have a beacon system you have used that you have in mind?

robotresearcher 5y ago
An array of active IR cameras in fixed, known positions, plus IR reflector markers on the UAV works well out of the box over ranges of a few meters. Eg. Vicon. Same tech as motion capture for movies. I don’t have experience using it in volumes as large as the video, but in moderate sized lab space it works very well, and at high frame rates. The trick is to invert the problem and have the active sensors off-board and the robot is the (reflected energy) beacon.
- bri3d 5y ago
  How do you propose you use outside-in to fly through an operating robot? There are too many sources of occlusion for off the shelf outside-in solutions to work at all in this video.
  - robotresearcher 5y ago
    I’m describing an indoor UAV positioning system that works well, not necessarily for this exact project.

hyperbovine 5y ago

This is the platonic ideal of an HN post.

smallerfish 5y ago
And this is the typical dismissive rebuttal of an HN post. They built a factory using a high degree of automation in a 3D space - i.e. they have a significant staff of automation engineers. Intel has been doing tight formation drone light shows outdoors (in weather) since at least 2014, if not earlier. Positioning drones precisely enough (i.e. within N centimeters) is therefore objectively possible if you have the right feedback system (and as a sibling comment points out, IR sensors could work for that). Offload all the processing to a computer rather than the drone, and it isn't an insurpassable problem. A small team of engineers for a few months is <$1m, which for a marketing campaign this splashy is nothing. Granted, per one of the sibling comments they did use an FPV pilot for at least some of the shots, but there's nothing stopping them from having automated other parts of it.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  yeah or it could take a week of planning a week of shooting and a week of editing with a crew of people that make drone videos for a living… they’re not pulling automation engineers off of their projects to work on something completely unrelated for a one-time promo shoot, especially not for an entire month