
Hexo+: Autonomous Aerial Camera - danboarder
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomous-aerial-camera
======
bicubic
I've spent the past year working on a similar concept using the same flight
controller, but didn't think that its safe enough for everyday consumer use,
not at least for another couple of years until radar or optical obstacle
avoidance is available in the consumer space. Everyone who operates MAVs knows
that things are guaranteed to occasionally go wrong even in ideal conditions.
If GPS or INS glitches, the drone becomes a high velocity flying circular saw
- and make no mistake, those flimsy plastic propellers will casually cut you
to the bone at decent speeds.

I've had a number of aborted flights and close calls during development, the
scariest one being a GPS glitch while testing full autonomy on a crowded
beach. The most common issue is poor GPS accuracy which can cause autonomous
flight to be erratic or completely uncontrolled. In these cases, the operator
will notice that the drone isn't responding correctly and switch to manual
control to recover. The worst possible issue is a GPS failure or occlusion: if
the system loses GPS during autonomous flight, it has about 10 seconds of
guessing its velocity based on other sensors before it becomes completely out
of control. In these circumstances, again the operator will quickly take over
to recover. GPS dropouts or poor accuracy are a regular occurrence in suburbs
and guaranteed in built up cities at altitudes below the skyscrapers. The only
time it's more or less reliable is over water and rural land.

I think giving drones without a means for manual control to untrained
consumers is almost negligent and a disservice to the industry. Speaking about
the 3DR flight controller and software in particular, there are a number of
known issues such as the dreaded uncontrolled flyaway which are guaranteed to
happen to one of the users at some point. God forbid one of these flies into a
kid and leaves them disabled; the FAA is just waiting for an excuse to crack
down on hobby MAV use.

~~~
nitrogen
_...the drone becomes a high velocity flying circular saw..._

How would efficiency be affected if the propellers were surrounded with wire
shields, like a household fan might be?

~~~
bicubic
I don't know about wire shields, but circular guards acting as ducts should
theoretically increase efficiency for quads due to the relatively slow
propeller speeds. The downside is they add mass and I've yet to see a compact
folding design that incorporates guards.

I think we'll see guards become a very common thing as designers find clever
ways to fold them in the near future. I also think that that FAA regulations
for low altitude drones in the future may very well mandate guards because
they go a long way towards preventing injury.

~~~
NickNameNick
Ducts around the fans might be prohibitive from a drag in forward-flight point
of view, even if they are desirable from a static hovering efficiency point of
view.

I don't actually have the numbers on that, but it's probably something to look
out for.

~~~
bicubic
It depends on how you're flying but drag is generally ignored for hobby use at
this stage. Increased drag will affect top speed and range, but endurance
won't suffer much because the vast majority of energy is used for altitude
control. If you reduced drag by 99%, the improvement in endurance would be
modest for the same reason.

Its a much bigger consideration for point to point missions like cargo
transport though.

------
M4pilot
The team section lists 3 "development" staff: there's a CTO and two
developers. There are 6 people on the team doing design, videography, and
marketing, including the CEO who does list himself as a "telecom and
electronics engineer", and so might be involved in design.

A startup building hardware - not to mention advanced image-tracking,
autonomous navigation, (hopefully) hazard avoidance, which are hard problems -
would in my estimation have more staff doing engineering and manufacturing,
rather than design and sales.

Is this a reasonable team arrangement? Am I underestimating the skills of
their technical staff, are they outsourcing engineering, or are they using a
preexisting plaform? Or am I underestimating the importance of design and
sales (which have certainly produced and brought to my attention a gorgeous
Kickstarter page)?

~~~
GrantS
From the Kickstarter description, they're leveraging existing open source
software: "The onboard software is based on the 3D Robotics open-source code"

Also note, they DO NOT include hazard avoidance in the current product: "The
reason for this is that there is no avoidance system included in the first
version."

So I think your questions are legitimate. The underlying question is: do we
now live in an era when a team of mostly non-technical people with a couple of
smart hackers can put this kind of product together from existing technologies
without inventing anything really new? I guess the answer is mostly yes but I
wonder if obstacle avoidance is really something that can be left out without
serious consequences.

------
fit2rule
I dunno .. does this really need yet another drone body and rig just for the
sake of the product? I mean, wouldn't it have been a little more sensible to
add "follow-me" features to existing drones - like, this could just be another
feature for ArduPilot .. does it really require all the product hype to
replace this? I think this is sort of a 'me too' factor with these kickstarter
campaigns - whereas in the past a hacker would just add the feature to the
existing open code, now its become a reason to start a whole new company and
get funding up front, first.

I think, rather than spend any money on these guys, it'd be simpler/less
problematic to just add follow-me to Ardupilot. With a little bit of
bluetooth/wifi tracking magic, maybe it'd be easy, who knows ..

~~~
jessaustin
Your suggestion to add this to an existing unit might well be the idea behind
their cheap "3D print" option. They won't _suggest_ that we do this, because
they don't want to support the integration, but it looks like they aren't
really trying to prevent it.

------
0x006A
How does it compare to AirDog: World's First Auto-follow Action Sports Drone
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7897776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7897776))

~~~
jessaustin
It's _much_ less expensive, for one thing.

~~~
sireat
Easy to be less expensive when Hexo does not have a working prototype and are
still in the hype stage.

Kind of sad though that Airdog is going to get less funding(and less exposure)
than Hexo, just because of lack of flashy marketing.

Still, looks like both projects will get funded and that is a good thing.

------
swalsh
A while ago my wife and I were having a debate about hollywood. Mostly about
how much it sucks, and why. I made the statement, it doesn't really matter
because technology is bringing down the cost of making a movie for everyone in
literally every way. At the time I was thinking about cheap CG, and DSLR's.
Great quality filming like aerial shots were one of the few holdouts that
individuals didn't have access to.

Now one of the last few holdouts are good quality talent, but I think people
can learn to improve skills, and technology can help there too.

To me there isn't a single "hollywood killer" but rather its a singularity of
sorts. When technology converges to the point where the quality of million
dollar marketing oriented mass audience films are irrelevant. Because cheaper
"niche" movies are more compelling anyways.

~~~
qq66
Great narrative storytelling talent isn't going to expand much. As technology
reduces the costs of everything else, the Spielbergs and DiCaprios will
capture all of the profit in the market.

------
kitd
Cool, but I thought "follow-me" technology was already pretty advanced. Does
this do anything different?

I'm a rower and a few people are looking at using follow-me drones for rowing
training and coaching. Here's one example (not follow-me, but shows
observation from a drone):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XfL_2EzEHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XfL_2EzEHI)

The theory is that a drone follows the rower, maybe moving around the subject
for different viewpoints, and the (possibly remote) coach can examine the
footage afterwards. A coach can advise many rowers without needing to be on
hand (or even in the same continent) for all of them.

------
unwind
Does anyone understand how it tracks the subject, i.e. the person being
filmed? They mention the MAVLink protocol
([http://qgroundcontrol.org/mavlink/start](http://qgroundcontrol.org/mavlink/start))
but that doesn't seem like an answer.

Not sure if they have enough on-board computing power to do real-time image
analysis and track that way.

~~~
BrechtVds
Just guessing: it follows your phone?

~~~
unwind
How, technologically speaking? GPS is way too coarse for what they're showing.

~~~
mtourne
Dead reckoning of phone trajectory using inertial sensor (of the phone) + gps
corrections ?

I don't see a dedicated camera on the drone (using gopro for machine vision is
not ideal), nor a beefy cpu to handle person tracking onboard, but I could be
mistaken.

------
johnm1019
This seems like a really cool product if you're above the treeline or on the
ocean. Otherwise, I'd worry about not having enough tree and lightpost
-disposable go-pros.

------
infruset
If you suddenly pull the brakes of the motorcycles, will the blades cut your
head off? I would worry about that before putting this out..

~~~
ceejayoz
Having inadvertently put my finger in a Parrot AR2 drone's blades, I strongly
doubt decapitation would occur. "Ouch, that stung a bit" is more likely.

~~~
sitkack
[http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1144377&page...](http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1144377&page=5)

RC helicopters have killed. A Parrot is a pretty small quad. I would find it
surprising if they have liability insurance for this.

~~~
jessaustin
This looks much more comparable to a Parrot than to the deadly helicopter you
reference. In general, do manufacturers carry insurance for claims stemming
from incidents like sticking one's fingers into whirling blades?

~~~
sitkack
No, the parrot is very lightweight
[http://ardrone2.parrot.com/ardrone-2/specifications/](http://ardrone2.parrot.com/ardrone-2/specifications/)

And yes, it isn't the act of sticking the fingers into blades, it is its
stated use of autonomously filming around a person. When I direct the camera
to maintain an angle and elevation with respect to a target and it impacts
that target, this is a liability problem.

