
IRIS+ - flippyhead
http://3drobotics.com/iris-plus/
======
ggreer
Drone technology is advancing at an impressive pace. I think we're going to
see some interesting (and terrifying) applications.

For example: Add some face detection software, then change the payload to a
laser dazzler and pepper spray cartridge. Now you have a drone that can
temporarily incapacitate people. When these get cheaper (say $100 per unit), a
police department could buy a swarm of 1,000 for $100k. Whenever a riot breaks
out, just unleash the drones (geofenced to the desired area). Instant crowd
control.

Like I said, interesting and terrifying.

~~~
personZ
It goes the other way as well: using a drone to commit arson or even an
assassination (mounting a weapon is well within the weight profiles of many
current devices), is something that is inevitable. Drones have range
deniability for things like ransom pickups as well.

As an aside, I expect anti-drone systems to become a significant debate soon
enough (e.g. if there's a drone peeping in my windows, what rights do I have
to disable it?), and then to become a significant commercial concern.

~~~
baddox
Drones are less practical than existing tools for most everything you just
listed.

For peeping in windows, a drone is extremely impractical. A telescope will
yield much better results. The only thing a drone can better do is look down
at your roof, or over your fence if your fence is higher than nearby
buildings.

For assassination, traditional tools are clearly more practical in nearly
every case. A hunting rifle at a few hundred meters is going to be a heck of a
lot cheaper, more reliable, easier to use, and more difficult to trace than
some drone with a mounted weapon.

I don't really know how arsonists generally do their thing, but I can't
imagine that dropping something flammable is more practical than just driving
by and throwing it.

I'm sure there are very specific cases where sophisticated drone usage could
be useful for committing these crimes, but I don't think it's a major concern,
and not even one of the biggest concerns of drones.

~~~
hamstergene
You seem to be only considering the moment of crime and disregarding what
happens before and after it. A tool that almost completely removes risk of
getting caught and need for alibi will surely be seen as more practical by all
except mad and ridiculously dumb people, regardless of how less effective it
is.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
A drone leaves all that bomb trace leaves and more - its construction, hair
skin and dna traces of the builder, even its radio control details. So its not
perfect; its more like leaving the rifle at the scene.

And the idea that shooting a gun brings down some hailstorm of official
response is myth. Fire a gun in most places and ... nothing will happen. Folks
will rush to the scene of any murder, but will only find the sniper's location
after hours or days of investigation. It won't be like the NCIS show where the
investigator glances around and says 'must have come from that rooftop; its
the only secure sniper post in a half-mile!' You can shoot from nearly
anywhere with line-of-sight, from the partly-open door of a parked delivery
van, without much risk of discovery.

~~~
jjwiseman
"Shotgun-Toting New Jersey Man Shoots Down Man's Drone", charged with criminal
mischief and weapons charges:
[http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/weird/Drone-Shot-Down-
Lo...](http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/weird/Drone-Shot-Down-Lower-
Township-277605811.html)

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droneuser
I'm posting this just had a heads up. We bought the old model of this drone,
the IRIS, and it had serious problems and they have very poor customer
support. I've been waiting for at least two weeks for a call back from
support.

The most serious of the problems was that the drone stopped working mid-flight
causing it to fall 20 feet on to concrete. We were very fortunate that no one
was standing under it.

~~~
zlite
Sorry to hear about that-our customer support usually resolves issues in a
day. Please email me directly with your order details at chris@3drobotics.com
and I'll escalate to manager to sort this out ASAP.

~~~
georgemcbay
Just a random heads up that this may be an issue for 3DR that should be
addressed to a wider audience.

I recently just bought a DJI Phantom 2 after a bit of decision paralysis. I
really like the open nature of the 3DR product line (and the fact that it has
a San Diego presence is great) and seriously considered the IRIS but after
doing a lot of "forum research" bad customer support when a problem was hit
was a very common theme.

I don't even know how "real" of a problem this is versus just being an echo
chamber thing but it was pervasive enough that I figured I'd just buy the $600
Phantom 2 as a starter and then reassess if (well, almost certainly when) I
start looking for something more than just a 'starter' drone.

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dweekly
Current IRIS owner here. Looks like the IRIS+ still only includes a two-axis
Tarot gimbal; while the gimbal _vastly_ improves image quality vs direct-
mount, failure to stabilize yaw yields a fair amount of shake - I was hoping
the IRIS+ would add 3D stabilization to offer full stabilization and was
disappointed to see this wasn't the case. On the bright side, the battery pack
is much bigger than on the IRIS (5100 mAh vs 3500mAh, which explains much of
the flight time difference) and the long legs are now included by default
weighing in at the same 1283g. The included follow-me mode is not very good
unless it's been dramatically improved from ~3 months ago. Will be interesting
to see how this ends up competing with RTF follow-me solutions from AirDog and
Hexo+ next year.

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simonsarris
Open question: How do you stop an assassin when the assassin is a poisonous
robotic bumblebee?

What about one hundred poisonous robotic bumblebees?

You might think these unfeasible near term, but a drone that simply flies high
and drops 300 dumb, poison-tipped flechettes (think capillary-powered syringe
tips) is feasible _today,_ isn't it?

(Sorry for the derail, I think the product looks great, I'm just commenting on
the rapid development pace of drones so far, wondering what implications might
be in another ten years)

~~~
djb_hackernews
s/drone|robotic/zeppelin/g

This sort of Technophobia has been around since the beginning of civilization.

Instead of focusing on the FUD, we should try to focus on the good.

~~~
calibraxis
Do people here not predict and counter downsides of their actions? Is this how
they work all day, with an attitude of, "Hey, it'll be fine"?

~~~
ZenoArrow
It seems to be rare, especially when it comes to new science and technology.
Sadly, with the military being such a large customer in these fields, we do
end up with a lot of undesirable tech. The most effective way to reduce it is
cut it off at the source (i.e. reduce military spending).

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daviding
Looking through the specs the flight time is just 16-22 minutes. How close are
we to some sort advancement in that area, as that seems to limit the
possibilities somewhat?

Is this a 'when batteries become magical' thing?

~~~
zobzu
If you make it a lot bigger it flies a lot longer (40min for a 4kg multicopter
for example ) If you make it an airplane it flies a heck of a lot longer (1 or
2 hours for a <1kg foam plane)

So yeah.. batteries need to get magical or our power usage efficiency needs to
get way better.

~~~
namuol
Are there any long-range plane/quadcopter hybrids for consumers? Seems like it
should be possible to get the best of both worlds

~~~
zobzu
Most build their own. Hybrids dont work well tho. Same problems as with the
real scale hybrids. its hard to get propellers that will give you a lot of
vertical thrust then not kill the glide ratio while still propulsion your
horizontally (ie forward) as well.

So some people simply have planes with vertical take off then the props rotate
when you need to go faster/longer.

Thats a lot of mechs thus less reliable tho - at least so far. Also the props
are huge and thus cause a lot of drag still. See the v22 osprey
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtGjzbVb76U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtGjzbVb76U)
for ex.

Theres some experiments with covered props (but that lowers the efficiency at
lower rotational speed) so that there is less friction when gliding forward.

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drawkbox
The follow feature is killer. One day maybe when people go places drones will
always follow, will really help for safety/documentation. For instance a trip
into the Grand Canyon or a skiing trip if things went awry. Battery life,
networking/communication distance needs to be much longer but there are so
many possibilities. Maybe we'll see Russian videos with drones in addition to
their dash cams that follow their drive.

~~~
robotresearcher
> a trip into the Grand Canyon

GPS needs a very good view of the sky, from lots of angles, to work well. Lots
more work to do to do it reliably outdoors with patchy-or-no GPS.

~~~
jjwiseman
The NASA Airspace Operations Challenge is trying to advance the state of the
art in UAV operation in conditions where there is no GPS or GPS is degraded:
[http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/centennial_challe...](http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/centennial_challenges/uas/)

As examples, inertial navigation or laser or vision-based techniques (VSLAM
etc.) might be ways to deal with GPS issues.

~~~
robotresearcher
How does inertial navigation help with following people for a flying camera
platform? Even if the subject carries a sensor, the reference frames will
drift unbounded.

Visual tracking should work, but is not reliable yet. Lots of people are
working on it.

~~~
jjwiseman
Right, I'm thinking of inertial navigation to help out in a case where you
have spotty GPS and you lose it for 10 seconds. It's not practical for these
sorts of applications to use only inertial nav, but it can help in the region
between full GPS and no GPS.

------
cornewut
There's a similar project on Kickstarter
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/airdog-worlds-
fi...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/airdog-worlds-first-auto-
follow-action-sports-dron)

~~~
andymoe
Airdog and many of the other "follow me" drone projects are based on the open
source autopilot, Ardupilot [1], that 3DR heavily supports development of. The
first really successful crowd funded drone, pocket drone [2], is going to
start shipping soon as well. I'm hopeful the others like AirDog and HEXO+ [3]
can pull it off as well. Hardware is pretty hard especially when it flies ;-)

If you are into this stuff and in the Bay Area sign up for the Meetup my
Partner and I run [4]. The next one at the Amazon Prime Air offices but
unfortunately is way wait listed.

[1] [https://github.com/diydrones](https://github.com/diydrones)

[2] [http://www.thepocketdrone.com](http://www.thepocketdrone.com)

[3] [http://hexoplus.com](http://hexoplus.com)

[4] [http://www.meetup.com/SF-Drones-Startup-Meetup](http://www.meetup.com/SF-
Drones-Startup-Meetup)

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dekhn
I'm not using the drone, but we got the radios that 3drobotics designed and
they're great. The firmware is written by Tridge (of Samba fame) and the
arducopter people use it heavily.

------
trhway
why propellers on all these drones aren't shrouded? For VTOL/hovering machines
the increased efficiency benefit usually more than covers the additional
weight of the shroud/duct.

~~~
yeahsure
As far as I know that usually results in reduced efficiency.

~~~
trhway
it depends on speed. Before some speed - increase which diminishes with
increasing speed and going into the loss after that. So the best is for static
thrust - VTOL/hover mode. The other commenter gave the explanation i think i
was asking about.

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durkie
does anyone know how these types of follow-me drones do with obstacle
avoidance? do you just tell them to fly high enough that they avoid things by
going over them?

~~~
mrpollo
I believe its restricted by a Geofence

~~~
atomicUpdate
This doesn't sound right. How do you geofence every tree and telephone pole?

~~~
garretruh
Obviously you can't. The geofence (as implemented in ArduPilot) is simply a
safety measure; once the aircraft passes outside of a defined zone, it returns
to a pre-determined waypoint inside the fence and waits for further pilot
commands.

To answer the initial question, the latest versions of ArduPilot implement
terrain following (based on terrain data loaded into the flight computer
before-hand). Additionally, there is also now support for range-finding
instruments like Lidar Lite [0], although I don't believe those are currently
being used in the terrain following mode. Such instruments could conceivably
be used to implement "look-ahead" functionality to more accurately avoid
obstacles.

[0] [https://store.3drobotics.com/products/lidar-
lite](https://store.3drobotics.com/products/lidar-lite)

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sytelus
I'd been salivating at DJI Phantom II for a while and now this option looks
even better because of ability program it + flight paths. One complaint I've
is too much emphasis on GoPro. People already have iPhone 6 and other
smartphones with much better camera and capabilities than GoPro. Why shouldn't
be I able to attach it to gimble instead of burning another $300+? This could
be a great selling point against DJI's Vision+ system because it would be net
cheaper and better for most people.

~~~
sytelus
ok.. may be not that better than Vision+. Gimble here is only 2D. Considering
Phantom II Vision+ includes camera + 3D Gible at almost same price and it has
25min flight time, Phantom is probably still the better option.

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atmosx
You mean that I can go snowboarding and this thing will stay infront/behind me
(I ride from 25 to 65 km/h) for 15 minutes?!

I can't believe this. Anyone here tested this drone?

~~~
pj_mukh
That should work. Just dont zip by a line of trees, might end badly.

------
post_break
A drone worthy of the name. This is very very cool. I will be keeping this on
my watch list.

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Istof
I didn't compare the specs but you can get a quadcopter for $38 shipping
included [http://www.amazon.com/my-first-
quad/dp/B00IZC6C8E/](http://www.amazon.com/my-first-quad/dp/B00IZC6C8E/)

~~~
commandar
You're comparing a very basic microquad that will easily fit in the palm of
your hand with a quad with a 550mm frame, 20 minute flight time, and
autonomous flight capability.

~~~
Istof
The 20 minute flight time is nothing to brag about... the much cheaper
microquad apparently flies for 10 minutes. If you want a drone with real
flight time, you need to go with a plane-type craft.

~~~
commandar
The micros realistically get 5-7 minutes.

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JoeAltmaier
Cool for documenting a party, a wedding, a parade. I see news agencies using
these in future for public events!

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pkinsky
The site's down, here's a cached copy:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://3drobotics.com/iris-
plus/)

~~~
mrpollo
Yeah we noticed that, its back up, THANKS for cache link :)

