Roswell Flight Test Crew

POSTING VIDEO: SkyIntelligence Orbit Selfie Drone from InterDrone

This concludes our special coverage from the InterDrone 2016 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming...

First of all, InterDrone was great again this year, and while I haven't been to every drone conference held across these United States, I have been to many of them, and InterDrone stands head-and-shoulders above the rest. They opened strong last year, and came back even stronger this year – and the dates for 2017 have already been set: September 6-8, back at the Rio Hotel & Casino.

The organizers asked us to give a total of five (five!) talks on FPV flying, drone maintenance, thermal imaging and our wide-ranging open forum: Drone Talk. Needless to say, we were pretty busy...

Not only were there individual booths on the show floor I wanted to visit but couldn't owing to the lack of available time – there were entire categories of booths I never got the chance to visit: purveyors of video monocles and drone insurance among them.

The SkyeIntelligence Orbit seems like an especially good product to wrap up our show coverage with, because it embodied two very specific trends I noticed at the show. First, the most recent generation of drones appear to be moving away from using ultrasonic sensors for altitude measurements in favor of infrared sensors.

Second, it has a simple one-axis gimbal and relies on digital image stabilization to render smooth finished video.

There are clearly some trade-offs here, because you're using a 4K sensor to capture a 1080p image – so you're throwing out a lot of pixels to achieve that stability. However, you're also removing a lot of the mechanical complexity and the vulnerability that comes with mounting a three-axis gimbal on a flying object.

Speaking of flying objects – I do like the visual style of the Orbit. Depending on your vantage point, it either looks like Lord Vader's TIE Fighter or a classic, 1950's UFO. Either way, pretty cool.

-Lucidity

 

POSTING VIDEO: Thrust-Vectoring for Better Speed & Stability

 

Generally speaking, when you're designing an aircraft, there are inherent tradeoffs to be made: if you want it to be more maneuverable, it's going to be less stable; if you want it to carry a heavier payload, it's flight time will be reduced; and so on...

So, when you encounter an innovation that promises to improve performance across attributes that typically work against each other – like speed and stability – you have something really special. That seems to be what the guys at SICDrone have come up with: by tilting two of the motors on what otherwise appears to be a conventional hexacopter, they are able to impart directional thrust to the aircraft.

To be sure, that easily translates into more speed, but it could also be used to achieve increased stability: rather than having to pitch and roll the aircraft to maintain a fixed position in the sky when acted upon by outside forces, like wind, it can just change the vector of individual motors.

The systems they had on display at InterDrone are definitely workable and would do everything they claim, I have no doubt, but if you look ahead to the full implementation of this idea – when every pair of motors or every single motor can pivot independently of the airframe – you suddenly see a whole new range of applications open up for drones.

The best part – for us, anyway – is that SICDrones is located right here in our home town of Portland. Not a big surprise, given Oregon's growing leadership in drone technology, but still very exciting. I imagine you'll be seeing more from us soon on this intriguing new technology.

-Lucidity

 

AUVSI Cascade Goes Big in Portland

The Cascade Chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) is going to be holding its annual fall event in a big, big way October 19-21 right here in our home town of Portland. The event, dubbed the Future Robotics Forum is going to be held at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), the site of many of our past public demonstrations.

The event kicks off with a dinner on Wednesday evening, featuring Ryan Hartman, the President and CEO of Insitu – all to benefit STEM education. Then, on Thursday, there are an enormous number of talks and presentations from industry leaders across a range of topics related primarily to drones, but also other unmanned systems. I won't even try to list them all here – go to the conference website to get all the details.

Then, on Friday, there are a pair of workshops that wrap up by noon: the Drone Startup Workshop and Mapping With Drones.

We go to drone conferences all over the United States, and this is an opportunity for you to get a national level experience right here in the Pacific Northwest. It's also going to be an unparalleled opportunity to meet the people moving the industry here in Oregon, which is fast emerging as the national leader in the UAS industry.

We'll be on hand throughout, and we'll be looking forward to meeting you and, if weather and OMSI permit, maybe doing a little flying out over the Willamette! Register today, or risk missing out on the biggest drone event yet in Portland!

-Lucidity

 

POSTING VIDEO: ProDrone Makes Its US Debut at InterDrone

 

Japanese manufacturer ProDrone made its US debut at InterDrone 2016, and their booth garnered an enormous amount of attention for reasons that you can see for yourself in this video. Wow!

One detail we didn't get into in this video is that these innovative designs are the result of innovative partnerships between ProDrone and its customers.

On its own, ProDrone does not have the incentive to invest the time and effort to develop these niche platforms, because without a very high level of confidence that there would be a market for it, they could easily lose a pile of money. At the same time, customers have problems that they would like to solve, but lack the technical know-how to make it happen.

So, the two enter into a partnership, wherein ProDrone develops a system to address the customer's specific needs (like inspecting the underside of concrete bridges, as an example), and the customer helps pay for the R&D and promises to make an initial purchase when the aircraft is ready for manufacturing.

At the same time, ProDrone can develop a new product with confidence that it won't end in complete disaster, and they have the opportunity to sell the product to additional customers and apply the lessons that they learned from it to other new products. Brilliant!

-Lucidity

 

POSTING VIDEO: X PlusOne VTOL at InterDrone 2016

 

I get the feeling that, one way or the other, I'm going to start flying fixed-wing pretty soon. The X PlusOne is the second planker we've got in the hopper following InterDrone – the other one being the Parrot Disco. For years, I've been totally committed to the multirotor platform, with some extremely brief forays into the world of single-rotor helicopters.

But now, there is just too many cool new fixed-wing systems coming out (or fixed-wing-ish, in the case of the X PlusOne) for me not to join in the fun! Lucky for me, I guess, that RealFlight X just came out, which will allow me to log my first couple of hundred crashes without any real-world pain. Still, if you live in SW Portland or the vicinity, you might want to keep an eye out for errant foamies tumbling down out of the sky.

On the Bench: Connex ProSight

Look what we're working on right now: it's the Connex ProSight HD FPV system! Announced publicly earlier this year, we've got our hands on one of the first review copies made available, and we're putting it through its paces on the bench right now...

Of course, an HD video downlink is nothing new in the world of Drones – just ask DJI or Yuneec. However, what sets this system apart is that Connex tells us that it is latency free: there is no lag at all between what's happening in the real world and what you see on your display.

This could be a game-changer for FPV racing and other applications that have, to date, relied on standard definition, analog transmissions. Imagine watching the Drone Worlds in real time in full HD – amazing!

That said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and we're cooking up some tests to verify that the ProSight is, indeed, comparable to an analog SD video transmitter in terms of latency. Stay tuned!

-Lucidity

 

POSTING VIDEO: Parrot Product Round-Up at InterDrone

 

 

Parrot is the largest drone manufacturer with which we have had essentially no contact throughout the entire history of the Roswell Flight Test Crew. We've done a couple of trade show videos with them and their professional SenseFly subsidiary, but we've never reviewed a Parrot product.

I think this stems from a decision made very, very early in our development. I had decided I wanted to get in on the whole quadcopter thing, and there were basically two platforms available in my price category: the Parrot AR.Drone and the Gaui 330x. The AR.Drone was really a forerunner of the drones we have today, but locked you into a closed eco-system. The Gaui 330x was an open platform with much more potential to modify and build up your own system with better range, latency free video streamed to goggles, and so forth.

Obviously, I ended up choosing the Gaui 330x, although it was a near thing for a time. Anyway, as a result of that initial decision, I think that I've always sort of subconsciously discounted Parrot: a fate the company and its products hardly deserve, given their progress and their footprint in the industry.

I'm pleased to say that, thanks to Gregory Crutsinger, whom you met in this video, it looks likely that is about to change. He's going to see about getting us some of their hardware in the coming weeks or months and we, in turn, will share what we learn with you. Stay tuned!

-Lucidity

POSTING VIDEO: The Latest from Venom Power at InterDrone

 

It's always a pleasure to catch up with our friend Jeff Simon from Venom Power. We met him for the first time last year at InterDrone, when he wowed us with his DJI Phantom replacement batteries, which include an OLED screen to display information about the battery's current condition, usage history and more.

This year, he brought along a whole bunch of new toys for us to look at – but the one that impressed me the most was I'm sure the one that cost the least: the lipo bags with metal snaps in place of velcro.

Like almost all of you, I'm sure, I've had lipo bags with velco closures for years and never given it a second thought. However, Jeff and the crew of certified smart people at Venom did think about it, tested it, and proved what should have been obvious to all of us: velco and the adhesive that holds it in place on the bags is flammable.

So, you're making an allegedly fire-resistant container using a material that readily catches fire to hold it closed. What's wrong with this picture? Anyway, kudos to the Venom Power team for recognizing this problem and coming up with a solution. Someday, somebody will still have a house because of your insight and innovation.

-Lucidity

 

POSTING VIDEO: B&H Photo at InterDrone 2016

 

 

Conferences like InterDrone and the opportunities we get to speak with people like Christian Domecq at B&H Photo pose something of a conundrum for me. Being a retailer, B&H carries gear from a myriad of different manufacturers, so a quick stop by their booth is an opportunity to learn about a lot of new and different products. Sounds great, right?

The problem is that the very format of online video seems to reward single-subject episodes, focused on a single drone, for example – because that way people can find the information they are looking for, and the video tends to rack up more hits. While I'm all in favor or racking up hits, I also want to make sure that we share with you something of the trade show experience, which necessarily includes seeing a lot of products, sometimes at the same booth.

Take this video, for example. If we didn't stop to speak with Christian, you wouldn't have leaned anything about the TBS Vendetta or the absurdly (and illegally) fast Varavon Pathfinder, nor the Dobby selife drone, and quite possibility not even the PowerEgg. PowerVision had its own booth at the show and we were trying to get an interview with them, but the scheduling didn't work out...

I guess there isn't really a solution to this issue – which makes it a conundrum rather than a more ordinary “problem.” So, I'll just live with the fact that fewer people will see this video, but those of you who do will be rewarded by learning about more products than you would have otherwise... <sigh>

-Lucidity

 

POSTING VIDEO: "Uber for Drones" at InterDrone

 

One interesting thing about drones is that innovation is happening across all aspects of the industry – not just the parts that actually fly. Today's video from InterDrone, featuring startup 500below, is a prime example. Bill Kimberlin doesn't make anything that flies – doesn't make any hardware at all, actually.

What he wants to make is a connection, between skilled drone pilots willing to help other people (and get paid for their time) and people who are looking for help and are willing to pay for it in order to get straight answers from someone with real-world knowledge about their problem.

It is certainly an intriguing idea, and one which seems like it will take off if it gets a critical mass of users on both sides of the equation. I was sincere in what I said in the video, by the way: I think the people who watch our channel are some of the best and brightest out there. If you've got the chops and the inkling to earn a little bit of extra coin, go ahead and sign up – and let me know how it goes!

I'm going to be interested to see how this endeavor turns out...

-Lucidity