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Lily – Drone camera

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Lily – Drone camera

#281

Post by japhyr »

stinos wrote: post #149
bglazer wrote: post #131

This is really, really cool. That said, flying objects are inherently dangerous. I was at a bike race and a guy was following the pack with a DJI drone. One motor suddenly failed and the thing plummeted to the ground from 40ft and broke into a bunch of pieces. Luckily, it didn't hit anyone but it would have been a major incident if it had. There's a lot of excitement about the cool, flashy features of these drones (f…

One motor suddenly failed Maybe drones need to start to incorporate parachutes to slow down the fall in case of problems like these, or maybe even airbags to ease the crash. Not that it would make it 99.9999% reliable, but it should be better than nothing. And also won't completely thrash your drone when it crashes. edit seems nine_k already commented with a similar idea

But a drone with a parachute falling into a pack of racing bicyclists sounds like a really bad idea as well, doesn't it? The larger issue seems to be the possibility of drones crashing into people who are involved in an activity that requires 100% concentration.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#282

Post by dba7dba »

jakejake wrote: post #227
bglazer wrote: post #131

This is really, really cool. That said, flying objects are inherently dangerous. I was at a bike race and a guy was following the pack with a DJI drone. One motor suddenly failed and the thing plummeted to the ground from 40ft and broke into a bunch of pieces. Luckily, it didn't hit anyone but it would have been a major incident if it had. There's a lot of excitement about the cool, flashy features of these drones (f…

I was walking down Hollywood Blvd one day when they suddenly shut the street down for about 5 minutes to do a fly-by RC helicopter shot. This was a few years before lightweight drones and cameras were on the market and this helicopter reminded me of a flying lawnmower! As it whizzed by me and thousands of other people, I was pretty sure it could easily have taken off a limb. I have a fairly cheap drone with a built-i…

I believe NYT carried an article last year about an RC chopper flyer who got beheaded by his own chopper's main rotor. It happened in the Central Park. It was a large RC Chopper and something went wrong and he ended up get killed. He apparently liked to do some dangerous stunts apparently...

However I would think these drones' propellers are shorter thus less dangerous? Any ideas?

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#284

Post by techaddict009 »

bglazer wrote: post #131

This is really, really cool. That said, flying objects are inherently dangerous. I was at a bike race and a guy was following the pack with a DJI drone. One motor suddenly failed and the thing plummeted to the ground from 40ft and broke into a bunch of pieces. Luckily, it didn't hit anyone but it would have been a major incident if it had. There's a lot of excitement about the cool, flashy features of these drones (f…

I was flying drone in my street in India and it got stuck in electric cables (we have cables on poles).

I just got nervous and called few people and cracked down the drone.

Then decided never play with them in domestic living area.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#285

Post by windexh8er »

bglazer wrote: post #131

This is really, really cool. That said, flying objects are inherently dangerous. I was at a bike race and a guy was following the pack with a DJI drone. One motor suddenly failed and the thing plummeted to the ground from 40ft and broke into a bunch of pieces. Luckily, it didn't hit anyone but it would have been a major incident if it had. There's a lot of excitement about the cool, flashy features of these drones (f…

As someone who has flown RC drones and heli for the better part of 5+ years now I generally find that there are 3 camps: 1) people who have never flown and assume the worst and often want unrealistic "guarantees" (see above), 2) those who fly, fly often and fly as safe as can be "guaranteed", 3) those who fly in an unsafe manner due to inexperience or just general carelessness.

I've always tried to fly responsibly at all times. I am cognizant of weather, people/pets, surroundings and right-of-way in the sky. Nothing in life is guaranteed 99.9999% of the time. Is it OK for me to levy a 99.9999% guarantee on you, that you drive perfect and responsible (no radio, no food, no phone, no talking, no distractions - period)? No. That's not life in general - we don't live in a bubble. Well at least the general population doesn't.

I am fine with sane safety measures put forth... Certifications, registrations, etc. But this is a hobby like many others. People own many kinds of recreational hobby gear that can endanger the operator or surrounding people - yet, they're accepted because people think they understand them. Most don't, however, understand simple engine operation - yet drive cars.

All mechanical vehicles have the guarantee to fail at some point or another and, yes, someone is 100% guaranteed to get hurt at some point in time. But, please don't ruin my hobby because you choose not to understand it.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#286

Post by donhan »

seivan wrote: post #76
alexcroox wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the big reason people don't buy these types of drones (this one certainly isn't the first of it's kind). It doesn't have obstacle avoidance or it will make a massive deal of it.

I probably have no clue what I am talking about, but wouldn't it be sorta like steering forces? Seek A Avoid B In your case, a ton of Bs in terms of leaves, branches and etc. I guess it would need a wide scan to detect if there is a path either vertically or horizontally.

I am guessing the biggest problem is the noise. Yeah, it's easy to figure out if there is a giant wall standing in front of you, but what about snow that constantly blocks its lens? Some leaves may be attached to tree so it might be required to circumvent, but some might not even be worth circumventing if it's just a piece of leaf falling.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#287

Post by onehp »

wehadfun wrote: post #170
flexie wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it the other way around. This could help humans handle obstacles, at least if it could launch itself automatically and when it's a bit smaller so that it's really easy to carry around. African American males could carry it. Then, when police was nearby it could launch itself. Maybe it would be triggered by the sound of sirens or if there is a website that tracks police cars, maybe it could launch every time the…

This is not a bad idea. Women could carry it if they run at night and if they don't make it home it could fly to a police station. Parents could send them out with their kids.

That would enable the truest form of helicopter parenting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent)

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#288

Post by icebraining »

dba7dba wrote: post #282
jakejake wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was walking down Hollywood Blvd one day when they suddenly shut the street down for about 5 minutes to do a fly-by RC helicopter shot. This was a few years before lightweight drones and cameras were on the market and this helicopter reminded me of a flying lawnmower! As it whizzed by me and thousands of other people, I was pretty sure it could easily have taken off a limb. I have a fairly cheap drone with a built-i…

I believe NYT carried an article last year about an RC chopper flyer who got beheaded by his own chopper's main rotor. It happened in the Central Park. It was a large RC Chopper and something went wrong and he ended up get killed. He apparently liked to do some dangerous stunts apparently... However I would think these drones' propellers are shorter thus less dangerous? Any ideas?

Not beheaded, though the blows did kill him, sadly.

But yes, the huge blades [1] compared to the small and softer wings of a quadcopter make a big difference.

[1] http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bA3wp9h3abI/maxresdefault.jpg (same model that killed him)

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#289

Post by jjwiseman »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #272
jjwiseman wrote: post #256

I applied to YC with a speech interface for drones, one application of which would be hands-free operation of selfie drones like this. E.g., if you're mountain biking you probably don't want to take one hand off the handlebars and try to press the button on the remote that means "Switch to leading shot". Instead, you'd just talk into your earbud: "Switch to leading shot" or "Climb to 100 feet", or more complex cinema…

Reliability needs to be way higher then what we're currently seeing with google now and siri due to the inherit danger of what ur controlling.

For specific domains, like drone control, you can achieve much better accuracy then you typically see in "dictation"-style speech recognition. You can use a statistical language model that represents the things you're most likely to hear.

For example, Google & Siri kind of need to be able to handle anything I throw at them: "What is Ke$ha's new album?" "What year was the Hardy Boys book 'Hunting For Hidden Gold' written?" They may use a language model that favors grammatical language, that is: "What is Ke$ha" is a more likely speech recognition hypothesis than "What hiss kush ball", but they still need a big model to represent that.

For drone control, you have much more constrained language, which helps recognition accuracy significantly. The model can tell the recognizer that if it heard "Go 100 feet" that the word is most likely to be a direction like forward/back/left/right/up/down, and not "neutrino".

It's a lot like the way that Norvig uses n-grams to illustrate writing a spelling corrector: http://norvig.com/ngrams/ch14.pdf Having a model lets you fix errors in the input.

Having constrained language and a good model is often critical to creating a successful speech interface.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#290

Post by zaroth »

bglazer wrote: post #131

This is really, really cool. That said, flying objects are inherently dangerous. I was at a bike race and a guy was following the pack with a DJI drone. One motor suddenly failed and the thing plummeted to the ground from 40ft and broke into a bunch of pieces. Luckily, it didn't hit anyone but it would have been a major incident if it had. There's a lot of excitement about the cool, flashy features of these drones (f…

Driving my car to work seems inherently much more dangerous than operating this drone, and we've found reasonable ways to insure against those accidents.

Life is inherently dangerous, and almost every technical innovation is first met with objections with how it will cause loss of life. The danger of accidental personal injury from drone is probably an order of magnitude lower than the danger of accidental personal injury from discarded banana peels.

> I want 99.9999% reliability and strong safety guarantees as a feature.

Then you want the technology not to exist, which I think is a terrible shame. It's like crying "fire hazard" around a Tesla. If you want a hobby device to rant against, try scooters, those things are much more deadly and rightly deserve to be taxed and regulated. [1]

The Lily drone if it actually performs anything like that video, is pure awesome, and absolutely the future. If it can be made quiet enough and compact enough it replaces everything from the cinematographer at your wedding, to the selfie.

It also probably looks good in black with a nice white pin-stripe, with the letters N-Y-P-D, floating around Times Square, and running no-knock warrants. 10 - 15 generations along actually, this thing is quite terrifying, for completely different reasons than 'OMG it will fall on me'.

[1] - http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/the-most-dangerou...

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