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Makani source code released

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Re: Makani source code released

#111

Post by tobinfricke »

tonyhb wrote: post #105
tobinfricke wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why this failed? Well, I think the main TLDR is that it would require significant additional investment to reach MVP. Also- the energy sector lacks the huge margins of the tech sector. Renewables have long been subject to a boom-bust cycle driven by the prevailing price of energy. Our released technical report "The Energy Kite" is intended to help answer this question, and to explain what we would do if we had the…

Clean small scale rapid deployment power generation sounds like such a good thing for emerging countries! :sob-emoji: But then again, so does solar. It's tough to compete when there are existing options. Full respect to everything you and your team built!

There are several companies working on this application. One that I know if is called WindLift: https://windlift.com/ based in North Carolina.

Re: Makani source code released

#112

Post by tobinfricke »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #75
tobinfricke wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome! You might be the first outside of Makani to run the code. :-) I'm glad you were able to get it up and running. Please let us know if you have any questions or run into any trouble.

Hah cool! Yeah I was hoping the simulator was a 3D sim environment I could use with my off road robot, but it was actually still really helpful even though it wasn’t that. I have been making a robot web UI and all your graphs and debug data give me ideas on more data I want to pipe up to the UI, and some improvements I can make to allow automatic UI elements from certain data structures. :) Here’s one of my robots: h…

That rover is super cool - good work!

We were just beginning to experiment with computer vision to augment/replace GPS at the time we were shut down.

Re: Makani source code released

#113

Post by tobinfricke »

fluffy87 wrote: post #86

What was the back of the envelope calculation that suggested this would work?

To be clear: crosswind kite power does work. The question is whether it is economical or competitive.

The paper that started it all is this one by Miles Loyd from 1980. It's short enough it could fit on the back of a large envelope. :-)

http://edge.rit.edu/edge/P15462/public/CAD/crosswind_kite.pd...

Re: Makani source code released

#114

Post by ubertoop »

arbitel wrote: post #101
rubicon33 wrote: post #76

Incredibly ambitious project. I watched the whole documentary. I'm surprised they were 'unable to secure additional funding'. Considering how many crackpot app-of-the-month companies have gotten cash thrown at them over the last decade, you would think a company doing real engineering would be drowning in money. It's a bummer to hear that they folded. Speculation abounds, I suppose, as to why investors started (or ke…

When investors look to invest, they want a fast ROI. Engineering company likes this typically takes many years to fruition or maybe not. It's much easier to justify dumping money on these "tech" companies like WeWork, AirBnb hoping to get another facebook unicorn than putting money into real engineering company like Makani.

Personally I find that troubling for the progress of humanity. We need big money (resources) to solve real challenging engineering problems.

Unfortunately it seems like a lot of the big money is going towards less critical 'problems' if problems at all, like social media companies.

Re: Makani source code released

#115

Post by ubertoop »

stingrae wrote: post #22
msoad wrote: post #8

Why this failed? I would love to learn more if anyone has more insider knowledge

I highly recommend watching the documentary they produced, https://t.co/y70yeZ3ZjY?amp=1 . My takeaway is that it took 14 years to produce a working kite and in that time conventional wind turbines became much more economical and efficient. After realizing this, they pivoted to doing off-shore wind generation because the cost for competitor products was higher. They had one somewhat successful test but were out of mo…

This was my take away as well.

What was somewhat surprising to me though was that, for all their technical ability, nobody at Makani foresaw the future of conventional wind turbine efficiency?

It just kinda seems like all of a sudden (in the documentary), they lifted their heads up, and 10 years had passed and conventional wind energy was dramatically improved. Case closed, that's it.

Re: Makani source code released

#116

Post by TaylorAlexander »

tobinfricke wrote: post #112
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah cool! Yeah I was hoping the simulator was a 3D sim environment I could use with my off road robot, but it was actually still really helpful even though it wasn’t that. I have been making a robot web UI and all your graphs and debug data give me ideas on more data I want to pipe up to the UI, and some improvements I can make to allow automatic UI elements from certain data structures. :) Here’s one of my robots: h…

That rover is super cool - good work! We were just beginning to experiment with computer vision to augment/replace GPS at the time we were shut down.

Thank you! You can certainly get a lot done with RTK, but computer vision is a big fun technical whale.

Re: Makani source code released

#117

Post by nikitaga »

bayindirh wrote: post #87
nikitaga wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X is still X and Google is still Google. Outside of X, Google was never known for crazy moonshots. Google was always an ad platform with a search engine.

X was Google X, now it's Alphabet X. Google was Google, now it's Alphabet Google. Google was the name of the search engine and the company. Now the company name has changed, everything is restructured and Google is an ad platform with a search engine. "X Development LLC. is an American semi-secret research and development facility and organization founded by Google in January 2010, which now operates as a subsidiary…

"X is what Google used to be." didn't strike me as a comment about the paperwork of corporate restructuring, but rather a comment on how Google isn't doing interesting things anymore. And I don't think anything changed in that regard. They just pulled non-core businesses such as X into Alphabet Inc. That doesn't mean that what X is doing used to be more important to Google than it is to Alphabet now, it's just paperwork.

Re: Makani source code released

#118

Post by nikitaga »

pas wrote: post #94
nikitaga wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X is still X and Google is still Google. Outside of X, Google was never known for crazy moonshots. Google was always an ad platform with a search engine.

Gmail seemed kind of crazy at the time.

I don't think they risked anything significant to build gmail. Nor was there any significant risk of gmail not succeeding due to hard technical problems. Compared to X projects like autonomous cars or power kites the original gmail was nothing crazy at all. Was it good software? Yes. Crazy? Hell no.

Re: Makani source code released

#120

Post by keizo »

tobinfricke wrote: post #43
keizo wrote: post #7

I wonder if this could be repurposed to kite sail large cargo ships.

That was indeed an application investigated by Makani! I think some companies are still pursuing this.

I wonder why it didn’t go anywhere. But maybe a difficult industry to interrupt. Google or an org with that kind of money should buy an cargo ship and just make it happen.
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