

A swarm of micro-quadcopters - m_for_monkey
http://hackaday.com/2012/02/03/dog-pod-grid-one-step-closer-to-reality/

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theon144
Very cool, but notice what kind of room they fly in - they're using cameras to
control the quadcopters, they're not autonomous, which means that if you put
them outside, they wouldn't work.

Still, pretty damn impressive.

~~~
gbrindisi
Using a gyroscope, gps, accelerometer and some other sensors is not a
difficult step to perform.

~~~
jakevoytko
It's pretty hard.

This assumes the existing radio links can handle the extra bandwidth. I don't
see a WiFi card, so they may use radios with low-baud serial connections.
Maybe the radios are good enough that doubling the radio communications is
fine. Now, all the new hardware means extra draw (and potentially extra
batteries) on each quadrotor. They might fly with this extra weight, but it
won't be nearly as long.

Also, indoor flying means no GPS. In this case, using accelerometers means
_something_ is dead-reckoning the position of each quadrotor. There's no more
space/power for processing juice, so the external system must do this. Now the
external system must take this localized data from each quadrotor and place it
in some global coordinate system (how does it do that?). It will use dead-
reckoning to determine the position of each quadrotor. This means the system
is accumulating errors over time, for each quadrotor. At least sailors could
eventually correct their position with stars - there is no real global
correction with these sensors. They could hypothetically do radio range
estimation on the radio signals of the quadrotors, but who knows what kind of
accuracy they will get.

Now I remember why I left robotics :-)

~~~
rauar
In one of their papers they state that they use Zigbee modules for a 56kbit
link.

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orofino
Every time a see a new quadcopter video, I wonder to myself how long before
local law enforcement starts using them.

I gratly fear a widely used, easily weaponized, remote controlled airforce
that local enforcement officers can easily obtain.

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_djo_
Surveillance drones were already used by the police in South Africa during the
national elections back in 1994, in that case on loan from the Air Force.
After further successful deployments in the years since, the SA Police Service
is considering issuing an RFP for a small UAV fleet.

Conceptually, surveillance-only UAVs are not dissimilar from police
helicopters, which have been used for decades without massive privacy issues.
In fact, when evaluating the option between acquiring a larger UAV platform or
additional manned helicopters with high-end electro-optical camera gear for
the Football World Cup, the local police went went for the helicopters as they
performed better in that specific role and there was no cost saving.

I don't see much chance of police departments weaponising UAVs any time soon
either. Not only does it push up the cost significantly, but there are
accuracy and liability issues that will take some time to sort out. At most I
could see helicopter-based UAVs being used to drop tear-gas near crowds and
even that's iffy.

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ams6110
A police helicopter can't easily land on your window ledge and observe (with
audio) what's going on inside for an extended period of time.

~~~
_djo_
Excellent point, although we're still quite far from the point where that sort
of technology exists and is cheap enough for police to be able to buy.

You'd also have to presume that if technology has progressed that far then
things like extremely accurate long-range cameras and the ability to record
sound from some distance away by measuring the vibrations on glass will also
be available to them.

To some extent this is already here; the local police here have recently begun
using a mobile van with a mast-mounted optical ball and have made arrests
using footage captured as far as 3km away. Similar technology has been used to
watch over the Occupy Wall Street protestors in NYC and elsewhere.

Point is the ability of the state to conduct surveillance on its citizens,
both close-up and from a distance, is only going to increase. Fretting about
individual pieces of technology misses the big picture, which is that only
changes to the law and proper oversight will prevent it from happening.

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peregrine
I wonder when they will implement the flocking behavior we see with birds and
in boid algorithms. ex <http://processing.org/learning/topics/flocking.html>

Obviously their will need to be a collision penalty but one would think this
kind of behavior would be easy to do.

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steve8918
I very much would love to set up a bunch of these quadrocopters to circle my
house and use them as security cameras. I'm not sure how long it would take
for that, but if you could set up something like 20 of these, have them
continuously rotate around the house perimeter, recording everything, and then
come back to recharge with another one taking off, I think that would be
pretty awesome.

~~~
rewind
I hope you don't have any kids with slingshots in your neighborhood. You just
invented the best game ever.

~~~
m_for_monkey
Unless the drones can defend themselves...

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kabuks
You're right. THAT would make it the best game ever.

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ahelwer
I enjoy how references to The Diamond Age are becoming more and more common in
tech beloved by the hacker community. Increases my excitement for the future!
I want my matter compiler already.

~~~
snowwrestler
It's interesting to reread The Diamond Age in the context of the recent fights
over IP. When manufacturing is almost free, what gives one object value over
another? Its design and software--the IP. In TDA, stealing IP was how smaller
organizations competed with and disrupted larger more established ones. No
organization in the world is larger and more established than the U.S.--hence
the increasingly strong efforts of the U.S. government to defend IP.

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th0ma5
Anyone have some tips on the small components? Most of what I seem to find on
the drone forums is about larger devices, maybe upwards of a foot and a half
or two feet across.

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bri3d
<http://wiki.openpilot.org/display/Doc/BumbleBee> this parts BOM (from
HobbyKing, mostly, so it's cheap) gives you a basic idea of what you'd need.

I built a similar quad using PCB milled on a homemade drill press for the
center plate (rather than buying it laser cut).

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dhughes
I found that incredible, amazing, stunning but also hilarious for some reason.
I don't know why but it funny seeing them all working together like that.

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xd
<http://www.youtube.com/user/TheDmel>

The "Aggressive Manoeuvres" videos remind me of something out of terminator.

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plessthanpt05
first thought exactly...just throw in a dash of skynet and, well, yup...

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cs702
The same video was posted a while ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3542542>

~~~
eik3_de
and before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3541996>

