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The Drone That’s Saving Ottawa From Poop

modernfarmer.com

11–20 of 26 posts

Re: The Drone That’s Saving Ottawa From Poop

#11

Ottawa finally makes Hacker News. Too bad poop-drones are the reason. Some day I have to write a blog post on why I left Ottawa for Silicon Valley.

15 miles away:

http://www.ottawasun.com/2013/11/26/drone-sets-off-security-...

(near the river too)

Re: The Drone That’s Saving Ottawa From Poop

#12
post #9

Of course you gamify this, imagine a drone that can return 'home' and land on a charger (this is quite doable) when it has low power. Now at a POV camera and WiFi link. Now setup of video game 'drone consoles' that for $5/15 minutes you can fly a drone and score points by scaring off geese. Some failsafes that don't let the operator fly out of the area, into the water etc. And voila.

Or host a programming competition to create the best AI to do the scaring/recharging automatically.

Re: The Drone That’s Saving Ottawa From Poop

#14

Ottawa finally makes Hacker News. Too bad poop-drones are the reason. Some day I have to write a blog post on why I left Ottawa for Silicon Valley.

A little off topic, but since you're there and I'm here, what are the top three things you miss about Bytown and what are the three things you so don't miss that just thinking about them for a moment causes you to forgive whatever grief you are experiencing in SV?

While we're at it, what are the three best things about SV, and what are the three things that sometimes make you wish you were back here? (They may be different from the three best things about Ottawa.)

Re: The Drone That’s Saving Ottawa From Poop

#16

High speed airships are probably a better architecture for this application than n-copters. There are remove controlled airships that can do 30 mph and they don't need to expend energy to stay aloft. They also won't fall like a rock out of the sky, so long as their gasbags haven't been punctured. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ecSXRK9ZPk Depending on the frequency of the wolf-call, speakers to produce them and thei…

I'd guess they aren't well suited to fly at the coast because of the high wind speeds. I would imagine that it's quite hard to get the blimp down when it's caught in thermal updraft also.

Re: The Drone That’s Saving Ottawa From Poop

#17
post #9

Of course you gamify this, imagine a drone that can return 'home' and land on a charger (this is quite doable) when it has low power. Now at a POV camera and WiFi link. Now setup of video game 'drone consoles' that for $5/15 minutes you can fly a drone and score points by scaring off geese. Some failsafes that don't let the operator fly out of the area, into the water etc. And voila.

Or host a programming competition to create the best AI to do the scaring/recharging automatically.

An even better [1] competition would be figure out how to herd them to an easy to clean up place, and then get them to take off :-)

[1] "... and they tend to empty their cloacas upon takeoff," -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/science/08qna.html

Re: The Drone That’s Saving Ottawa From Poop

#20
post #16

High speed airships are probably a better architecture for this application than n-copters. There are remove controlled airships that can do 30 mph and they don't need to expend energy to stay aloft. They also won't fall like a rock out of the sky, so long as their gasbags haven't been punctured. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ecSXRK9ZPk Depending on the frequency of the wolf-call, speakers to produce them and thei…

I'd guess they aren't well suited to fly at the coast because of the high wind speeds. I would imagine that it's quite hard to get the blimp down when it's caught in thermal updraft also.

True. These things would have to cope with winds of up to 75 mph to be active most of the time.
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