We watched the School Students prepare and compete today, pretty sure I got photos of all of them, sorry if I missed anyone.
Special mentions go to the Jaimyn Mayer from Brisbane. I really felt for him, his UAV appeared to lose radio communication during the scrutineering flight and then his aircraft terminated its flight like they are supposed to.
Unfortunately his aircraft was a complete write off but I feel he deserves special mention. All of the other teams had teachers and schools who launched a challenge, this young guy saved up the money himself and ran the challenge all on his own which is an amazing feat.
Also well done to the team from the US who managed to rebuild their Hexacopter into a Quadcopter after of four rotor blades when
the wind gusted blowing it over, despite trying to 3D print these, they removed two arms and reconfigured the flight control system to allow it to fly as a quadcopter. Despite this they were eliminated the next morning, great effort team.
suffering thedestruction of four rotor blades when the wind gusted blowing it over, despite trying to 3D print these, they removed two arms and reconfigured the flight control system to allow it to fly as a quadcopter. Despite this they were eliminated the next morning, great effort team.
of four rotor blades when the wind gusted blowing it over, despite trying to 3D print these, they removed two arms and reconfigured the flight control system to allow it to fly as a quadcopter. Despite this they were eliminated the next morning, great effort team.
Aplus mobile has a Kickstarter campaign that frankly is not going so well $1500 pledged out of $8000 target with 3 days to go, I would have thought that every celebrity would be backing them.
Essentially this allows you to detect the presence of Drones, maybe the kickstarter project is stillborn because Drones are essentially loud buzzing things that are pretty obvious, what you need is something to actually disable the drone, perhaps some stealth defence drone that can shoot down other drones (yes I think it will come to this, if I was a celebrity being hounded by press this is exactly what I would do)
Virtually Indestructible Quadcopters
These guys have created a Virtually Indestructible Quadcopter they fly it into solid surfaces, launch it from the water, hit it with a paintball gun and a shotgun and it still intact.
Having smashed a bunch of quadcopter parts with my kids over the years, we ended up giving up on it as the cost of keeping one the air with children flying was prohibitive, not to mention the fact it spent more time waiting for parts than it ever did flying.
DYIDrones.com & 3drobotics.com
These guys DYIDrones.com & 3drobotics.com are the pioneers and leaders in the semi pro enthusiast market making and selling ardupilot open source autopilot software for drones as well as all the hardware and software to enable this along with ready kitted out airframes.
OpenPilot is a competitor to Ardupilot but is aimed at the more professional end of the nascent commercial drone market.
OpenPilot was started at the beginning of 2010 and is a serious use platform aimed at civilian and research purposes, with emphasis being placed on making the platform especially suitable for aerial photography and aerial video applications.
Beer Delivering Drone
The aircraft engineer in me (yes I was, once upon a time in another lifetime) says that this video didn’t have a full case of beer below it, but the beer drinker in me loves the concept.
Drone Deploy
Drone Deploy is a hardware and software solution to enable cloud based mission control for drones. By including an LTE comms unit in the device it gives you the ability to tap into the mobile phone networks and extend your range literally across the globe.
Parrot BeBop Quadcopter
Parrot one of the more successful enthusiast quadcopter manufacturers is about to release their latest version the new Bebop quadcopter with built in rotor guard and 14 megapixel gyro stabilized video camera.
The Bebop Drone analyzes data from numerous sensors automatically: 3-axes accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer. one ultrasound sensor with an 8 meters reach, one pressure sensor and a vertical camera to track the speed.
Penguin B UAV
The UAV factory builds the Penguin B UAV which it the closest thing you can get to a military drone without putting on a Uniform, when launched from a car and landing on skids that form part of the tailplane this baby holds the flight record for 54.5 hours aloft.
Tilt Rotor Quadcopter
Tilt Rotor Quadcopter is an experimental project which allows the rotors to tilt forward thereby transferring rotor thrust forward without having to tilt the entire airframe forward, exposing the top of the quadcopter to a massive amount of drag and an unstable mode of flight (there used to be a phenomena with early helicopters in particular the Bell Iroquois called the Huey roll, where by a sudden take off with extreme nose down attitude would result in massive pressure to the top of the cabin forcing it into a situation it could never recover from).
By tilting the rotors forward this Quadcopter has managed a top speed of 53mph
their Hexacopter into a Quadcopter after of four rotor blades when
I would have thought that every celebrity would be backing them.
