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I wonder how this handles obstacles. The trails we ride are not wide open ski slopes, or rivers, often times they are tight/wooded trails. Would like to see h
by josefresco 12y ago
I wonder how this handles obstacles. The trails we ride are not wide open ski slopes, or rivers, often times they are tight/wooded trails. Would like to see how it handles "close following".
Lastly, the part in the video where the guy just tosses it into the river was definitely mind-blowing.
- alexcroox 12y agoThis is the big reason people don't buy these types of drones (this one certainly isn't the first of it's kind). It doesn't have obstacle avoidance or it will make a massive deal of it.
- agumonkey 12y agoIntel last keynote demoed very capable drones. They're showing it off, it won't be long until it hits the market. They named the components RealSense, a miniature kinect I guess. Nice demo at 4:55: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us0BqJvsF9k&t=295 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us0BqJvsF9k&t=295
- dharma1 12y agoNow shipping in mobile phone size - http://www.pcworld.com/article/2907352/intel-shrinks-realsense-camera-targets-smartphones.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2907352/intel-shrinks-realsen... Shame the dev kit only has Windows support.
- agumonkey 12y agoConfirms my thoughts, it really is a miniature Kinect-like kit.
- robotresearcher 12y agoRealSense uses projected IR and thus doesn't work outdoors. (edit: because short-range and little ambient IR are required)
- agumonkey 12y agoThanks for the tip. Are there any portable technology that would work outdoors ?
- robotresearcher 12y agoVision works for animals, and a lot of people are working very hard to do it for computers. Google "UAV visual SLAM" for examples. LIDAR works already but is heavy, power hungry and expensive. Not good for these small vehicles.
- agumonkey 12y agoYeah, I pictures a Google Drone laughing.
- rasz_pl 12y agostereo vision, structure from motion, animals use both
- infogulch 12y agoExcept the end of that video shows it working in a forest... https://youtu.be/Us0BqJvsF9k?t=6m14s https://youtu.be/Us0BqJvsF9k?t=6m14s
- robotresearcher 12y agoOK, that's cool. I stand corrected. Clearly it can work outdoors in some circumstances. IR texture projectors get washed out by ambient IR from the sun. Thus the choice of a shady forest for the very nice demo. People have also used Kinect outdoors in the evening, etc. But in the general case you can't rely on this approach because sun.
- infogulch 12y ago> because sun. That's a fair point. So RealSense will probably work at night, in a shady forest (like the demo) or maybe the shady side of a mountain, but as soon as the sun is involved IR becomes unusable. I don't suppose you could switch the other side of the visible spectrum and do UV cameras, could you? Having your data reduced to one dimension per pixel really makes the AI easier.
- seivan 12y agoI probably have no clue what I am talking about, but wouldn't it be sorta like steering forces? Seek A Avoid B In your case, a ton of Bs in terms of leaves, branches and etc. I guess it would need a wide scan to detect if there is a path either vertically or horizontally.
- jader201 12y agoWell, (A) has a tracking device. All the (B)s don't. If they did, then yeah, this would work. Right?
- seivan 12y agoYeah but I am thinking it has some sort of an scanner, sorta like self-parking cars do :). So once it Avoids (Steers away) B it can continue to Seek (Steers toward) A with the tracking device. Obviously depends on how well the scanner to pickup obstacles work. You would need some sort of a heat map to detect leaves or branches.
- jonathanyc 12y agoIt is a hard robotics problem. Saying that "it would need a wide scan" is a vast underestimation. Try looking up some papers on obstacle avoidance. Also, consider the costs of sticking the additional sensors on the robot, processing that data in realtime, and still powering the whole thing.
- donhan 12y agoI am guessing the biggest problem is the noise. Yeah, it's easy to figure out if there is a giant wall standing in front of you, but what about snow that constantly blocks its lens? Some leaves may be attached to tree so it might be required to circumvent, but some might not even be worth circumventing if it's just a piece of leaf falling.
- crimsonalucard 12y agomaybe someone can pull it off with ultra sound? Those can be pretty cheap.
- chinpokomon 12y agoProbably won't have much resolution for leaves. I've used ultrasonic transducers for a college class project almost 15 years ago. Ultrasound worked great for hard surfaces like walls, but softer materials like clothing reduced its range of detection. Snow covered trees, I think will have a similar signature that would be hard to detect except at close range. With a UAV, it could be done, but it'd have to be moving pretty slow I think. You'll probably have better luck with some sort of optical system.
- joefreeman 12y agoI guess the drone wouldn't be able to launch from the water if it had landed upside-down? (As a concept, this is amazing - excited to see how well it works in practice.)
- monk_e_boy 12y agoWaterproof will be amazing safety for kitesurfing and surfing in general, quadcopters are super cool, but you don't want to drop one in salty water. There are already techie stuff for kiters, we use the Woo device and gopros a lot. Most areas have a club to keep members under control (irresponsible kiting can be dangerous to people not in the sea, unlike surfing) ... our club is keen on getting Woos, GoPros, webcams, internet enabled wind-o-meters etc... Hope they decide to get one of these!!
- joefreeman 12y agoI can't imagine that propellers play nicely with kites...
- lechevalierd3on 12y agoif you could but a beacon of the leading edge of the kite and setup a NO GO zone between the remote and the kite's beacon that would solve that issue.
- titanomachy 12y agoSounds good in theory, but in practice kites can move really fast when manoeuvring or doing tricks. No guarantee that the drone would always avoid you successfully. You'd have to stay aware of where it is and where it's going, which would probably interfere with your kiting significantly.
- masukomi 12y agoWaterpoof also means we can start seeing drone footage from within rain storms.
- semi-extrinsic 12y agoThe biggest showstopper for me on this is the hugely disappointing top speed (40 km/h). I'm an alpine skier (ex-racer) and the only times I go that slow is on transport stages. This thing literally wouldn't be able to keep up with Usain Bolt running the 100m. It needs at least twice the top speed.
- wahsd 12y agoUsain Bolt does around 38 km/h
- semi-extrinsic 12y agoYeah, but I bet he accelerates faster. Edit: he accelerates from standstill at 9.5 m/s^2. I couldn't find data on what drones do.
- jonknee 12y agoDrones usually accelerate quite rapidly (electric motors and all).
- freehunter 12y agoWell electric motors can accelerate rapidly, but if they're pulling something heavy, all you'll get is rapidly spinning electric motors and a slowly rising object.
- semi-extrinsic 12y agoStill, that's zero to 95% of top speed in one second (or 5 meters).
- baddox 12y agoNot for 20 minutes.
- jonknee 12y agoThat's actually pretty speedy for a quad, especially to remain stable. If you want to race at 100MPH and have gyro-stabilized video you should get a helicopter and a camera crew. I for one would prefer the aerial robot following me to not be traveling at 60MPH. That's asking for a serious injury.
- monk_e_boy 12y agoWonder if you can buy a few and tell them to follow each other.
- grecy 12y agoThe FAQ says they're working on having multiple cameras follow one person
- jshap70 12y agoThis is the true hacker mentality right here
- TeMPOraL 12y agoYou could probably just duct tape the tracking device to another drone. Looping them together like ants would be cool! :D.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- guiporto 12y agoYeah. I kiteboard and I would love to make some images using Lilly. But I'm pretty sure eventually Lilly may crash into the lines or kite.
- dtjones 12y agoSame. Also curious about the max wind speed it can handle
- titanomachy 12y agoUgh thinking of that gave me shudders. Kiting is dangerous enough without these things flying around, I would definitely give someone a piece of my mind if they started flying a drone in a busy spot.
- blackkettle 12y agoI wonder how well it will work for surfing. Probably great for small crumblers and open faces; probably not so great at the Right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N_-vxfz4uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N_-vxfz4uw . Can you imagine how sick it would be to get this thing to follow in a tube at Teahupoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7woVTuN8k3c#t=116 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7w... !!
- gonzo 12y agodo you surf? Have you ever experienced the push of air that develops from a closing / collapsing tube?
- blackkettle 12y agoyes, yes [i assume you mean either getting spit out, or closed out on]. drones are starting to make inroads here too, but it is still mainly remote stuff, taken from afar and manually controlled by someone on the beach. something like this at jbay would be amazing.
- flexie 12y agoI see it the other way around. This could help humans handle obstacles, at least if it could launch itself automatically and when it's a bit smaller so that it's really easy to carry around. African American males could carry it. Then, when police was nearby it could launch itself. Maybe it would be triggered by the sound of sirens or if there is a website that tracks police cars, maybe it could launch every time they are near. Or maybe an apple watch could detect fear from differences in pulse and then launch it. Maybe some other trigger A future, self launching, slightly smaller version of this could be a great protector of civil rights.
- vdnkh 12y agoThis is a colossally stupid idea. How is this better than someone having a cellphone? Are you always holding it outstretched on your hand, anticipating a cop to drive by any second? Or can it crawl out of your pocket to defend your civil rights?
- bdamm 12y agoOr perhaps mounted on top of an ACLU baseball hat?
- wehadfun 12y agoThis is not a bad idea. Women could carry it if they run at night and if they don't make it home it could fly to a police station. Parents could send them out with their kids.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- onehp 12y agoThat would enable the truest form of helicopter parenting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent)
- 12y ago
- BinaryIdiot 12y ago> I wonder how this handles obstacles. According to the creators v1 doesn't handle obstacles at all due to time and cost. I'm sure a later version can be made to do so; I feel like it should be far easier to do in a 3D space versus a flatted space like ground vehicles.
- rattray 12y agoRelatedly, I wonder what would happen if you turn it on and then walk inside a building...
- kitd 12y ago> rivers I'm a rower so fortunately I won't have the obstacles issue. In fact, these could be great for rowing coaches who can put the controller in the boat then get close up to the rower/crew without needing oversized launches that wash everyone else down. 20 mins might be a problem, but I don't see it as insurmountable.