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.
Intel 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:
OK, 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.
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.
It 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.
I 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.
Probably 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.
I 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.
I heard the phenomenal term "curling parenting" the other day, where the kid is the stone and the parents are the two people frantically working to reduce the friction in front of it.
This 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?
Police do not react well to being filmed. What will likely happen is that your drone will be confiscated as "evidence" or destroyed. Its not as if cell phones do not exist to fill the same role here.
The ACLU makes an app that streams the video recording to an Internet server in real-time at the best possible quality given your data speed. It will also upload the full video when possible without additional action.
yes, 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.
Ugh 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.
The 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.
That'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.
Well, I would imagine a lot of your speed is downward right? Then it's a matter of a controlled decent really. I'd guess that would increase the top speed of the device as it's really just falling out of the sky and steering.
Well 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.
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.
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.
Waterproof 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!!
Sounds 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.
Lastly, the part in the video where the guy just tosses it into the river was definitely mind-blowing.