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Diy Drones NewspaperVolume 1 Diy Drones News Bringing you the News
Today of the World of TomorrowOctober 1st , 2013
3D Robotics Announces $30 Million Series B Financing
Blog by Chris Anderson
September 26th, 2013 by Chris Anderson
SAN DIEGO, Calif., Sept. 26, 2013 — 3DRobotics, the leading open Unmanned AerialVehicle (UAV) company, today announced a$30 million Series B financing round. Theround was coled by Foundry Group, a newinvestor, and existing investor TrueVentures, along with participation fromexisting investors O’Reilly AlphaTechVentures and SK Ventures. As part of thisround, Jason Mendelson of Foundry Groupwill join the 3D Robotics board of directors.
This round of funding augments a late2012Series A round led by True Ventures andO’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. It will enable 3DRobotics to mainstream aerial robotics andsurveying, making advanced UAV technologyaffordable and easy to use for its worldwidecustomer base of businesses andindividuals. Working with its large communityof users and open source developers, 3DRobotics has created the industry’s leadingopen UAV platform, APM, and is nowextending that to a new generation ofautopilots, software and readytoflymulticopter and fixedwing UAVs.
As part of this funding round 3D Robotics willexpand its development and deployment ofadvanced UAV applications, with a focus onagricultural crop mapping and othercommercial aerial survey technology. “The
opportunity to bring ‘big data’ to agriculturethrough lowcost automated aerial cropsurveys could be a gamechanger for bothfarming and the UAV industry alike,” saidChris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics.“Adding UAVs to the precision agriculturetoolkit of a 21st Century farmer gives themthe power to use imaging data to not onlyincrease yield, but decrease water use andthe chemical load in both food andenvironment.”
Starting in 2015, AUVSI, the UAV industrytrade group, estimates that the first threeyears of integration of commercial dronesinto the national airspace will create morethan 70,000 jobs in the United States with aneconomic impact of more than $13.6 billion.International prospects are much larger.”We’re building out a worldwide sales,service and support model that will help usbuild longterm relationships with localresellers that can inturn support their localcommunity requirements for mapping andimaging,” said John Cherbini, 3D Robotics VPof Sales.
3D Robotics also recently announced Iris, thecompany’s first readytofly,fullyautonomous quadcopter for theconsumer market. The lightweight vehiclecan conduct handsoff missions and recordhigh definition aerial video, bringing prolevelUAV features at an unprecedentedsub$1,000 price. Iris is now shipping todevelopers, with consumer sales to begin inNovember.
In conjunction with Iris, 3D Robotics hasextended its exclusive relationship with thePX4 team at the Swiss Federal Institute ofTechnology (ETH), one of the world’s leadingUAV research institutions. In collaboration
with ETH, 3D Robotics has announced itsmost powerful autopilot to date, Pixhawk,which will ship in October. Pixhawk is a new32bit open autopilot platform designed forimproved ease of use and reliability whileoffering unprecedented safety featurescompared to existing solutions.
3D Robotics’ mission is to deliver reliable,easytouse autonomous navigation andsensing solutions to customers usingland,sea or air based vehicles. 3D Robotics’open UAV technology, which is in use bytens of thousands of customers already,delivers prolevel aerial robotics features atconsumerlevel prices to bring UAVapplications to mainstream markets.
3D Robotics is a privatelyheld NorthAmerican company with offices in Berkeley,San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.
For more information on the company visit:http://www.3drobotics.com
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GoPro Hero 3+ Announced Hackathon and Droneconference in NYC
Blog by Alan Sanchez Blog by Gabriella Levine
GoPro just announced itsnew camera, the Hero3+. Iam really interested to seehow much smaller it really isthan the hero3. Longerbattery, sharper lens,smaller, 720p at 120fpssounds really good to me.The buttons on theenclosure seem bigger, Ihope so, the old ones werea pain to press. Anyonegetting one?
DroidPlanner v1.0.0 [Update]
Blog By Arthur Benemann
The update
If you follow the alpha versions youknow we added a lot of good stuff to it.The new version has the followingupdates, probably the bold ones matterthe most to you ( v1.0.0 over 0.14.2):
Droidplanner v1.0.0
● No new changes tothe codebase, justsetting a milestone
Droidplanner v0.16.0
● Bluetooth Support● Fixing layout
problems with theSurvey window
Droidplanner v0.15.0
● New Waypoint Editor● New Survey
Interface● Support for Physical
Joysticks● Chinese Translation● Code Refactoring● Minor fixes (please
consult GIT history)
Drones & Aerial Robotics Conference, atNYU on Oct 11th13th.30% off code for DIYDrones:DARCFRIEND30DARC is the first ever fullspectrum droneconference. Join in conversation with CEO'sfrom major robotics companies (Parrot,3DRobotics, and more), researchers doingcutting edge work with agile robots (VijayKumar of the GRASP Lab, and more), andaerospace veterans (including former fighterpilot and Director of MIT's Humans andAutomation Lab, Missy Cummings).
DARC combines a DIY/maker event, a dayof curated talks and live drone demos, and aparticipatory techpolicy conference that'stackling big questions about how we mightintegrate drones into everyday life. Anyoneinterested in the technology or culturalimplications of drones should attend.
Website: http://droneconference.org/
Registration:https://droneconference.org/register/The third day of the conference (Oct 13th)there will be a hackathon at ITP thatNodeCopter and Parrot are sponsoring.We're giving away at least 3 Parrot ARdrones to the top three hacks.More info on the hackathon:http://nodecopter.com/2013/newyork/oct13To register for the hackathon:http://www.eventbrite.com/event/8293334587
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The new forums need YOU! 'Simpler' Andropilot 1.8 released toproduction
Blog By Gary Mortimer Blog By Kevin Hester
By now everybody must be aware of the excellentnew wiki's that the team has been putting hours ofwork into and really doing a fine job of it. You mighthave also seen the Community drop down menu atthe top of the page at http://www.ardupilot.comunder that you will see a links to here and APMForum, this is where our forums will migrate to overtime.
Stefan has done an excellent job of improving thefunctionality of the forums, making it less spammyin the process.
Its attracting questions from wiki users now and assuch we need some more of the experts that hangout here to be on hand to help new users there.
The platform that this website uses is about toundergo a major change and this will give us anopportunity to make this site a little more curatedwith the best of peoples builds and ideas gettingmore attention.
So come on over to the new forums and lend ahand.
The main features compared to the last GArelease:
● Substantially simplified user interface (thesidebar now gets hidden by default inlandscape mode if you want it back, justchoose 'Show Sidebar' in the menu). Mostinteresting data floats over the map view.
● Bluetooth and onscreen joystickimprovements for safety and response rate
● More time spent with the profiler, should beeven faster than old versions
● Special UIs for phones with small screens
If you would like to use the bluetooth or on screenjoysticks, please be extra careful because thatcode has been used by less than 2% of theusers. If you need to grab control away with theRC xmitter, just toggle the mode switch or pressthe cancel button on the tablet/joystick.