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Lily – Drone camera

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471–480 of 496 posts

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#471
post #235
post #197

It would be cool if the remote in your pocket had a "Call 911!" button. So like, if I was out snowboarding, and saw an avalanche coming, I probably wouldn't be able to call 911. But this little drone is a good deal above me and the avalanche/murderer/shark/whatever, it could call 911 for me, and when they recovered it, it would have video of what happened to me. It could even fly towards a preset location (known rang…

In an avalanche you can't call anyone to save you. It will take them too long to reach you, and you'll suffocate before they can reach you. The chances of survival drop severely after 15 minutes of burial. The only people that can save you in an Avalanche are the people in your group. Source: Canadian ski patroller.

The drone would hopefully though still be hovering above you so would help any people in your group find you faster

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RealSense uses projected IR and thus doesn't work outdoors. (edit: because short-range and little ambient IR are required)

Except the end of that video shows it working in a forest... https://youtu.be/Us0BqJvsF9k?t=6m14s

OK, that's cool. I stand corrected. Clearly it can work outdoors in some circumstances. IR texture projectors get washed out by ambient IR from the sun. Thus the choice of a shady forest for the very nice demo. People have also used Kinect outdoors in the evening, etc.

But in the general case you can't rely on this approach because sun.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#473
post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's horrible and possibly a deciding factor. I guess it had to be done in order to make it waterproof.

I concur, you really need the possibility of multiple battery loads in order to get full value out of this stuff. Can you do non-conductive power transmission at reasonable weights and efficiencies? I mean, my toothbrush does it, but I can't speak to the charging rate.

Wireless power transmission can only be implemented using alternating current through induction. Very hard to implement this in any meaningful way for battery powered digital devices.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the end of that video shows it working in a forest... https://youtu.be/Us0BqJvsF9k?t=6m14s

OK, that's cool. I stand corrected. Clearly it can work outdoors in some circumstances. IR texture projectors get washed out by ambient IR from the sun. Thus the choice of a shady forest for the very nice demo. People have also used Kinect outdoors in the evening, etc. But in the general case you can't rely on this approach because sun.

> because sun.

That's a fair point. So RealSense will probably work at night, in a shady forest (like the demo) or maybe the shady side of a mountain, but as soon as the sun is involved IR becomes unusable. I don't suppose you could switch the other side of the visible spectrum and do UV cameras, could you? Having your data reduced to one dimension per pixel really makes the AI easier.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, that's cool. I stand corrected. Clearly it can work outdoors in some circumstances. IR texture projectors get washed out by ambient IR from the sun. Thus the choice of a shady forest for the very nice demo. People have also used Kinect outdoors in the evening, etc. But in the general case you can't rely on this approach because sun.

> because sun. That's a fair point. So RealSense will probably work at night, in a shady forest (like the demo) or maybe the shady side of a mountain, but as soon as the sun is involved IR becomes unusable. I don't suppose you could switch the other side of the visible spectrum and do UV cameras, could you? Having your data reduced to one dimension per pixel really makes the AI easier.

There's a lot of UV in sunlight too. Hence sunscreen. Many birds can see it. Some birds have patterns on them that are only visible in UV. Fun facts.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#476
post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds plausible but I haven't read about this before and would like to know more, do you have a reference handy?

In regards to turning on the z-axis to be able to land with engine failure, I believe User is referring to Autorotation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation

No, it's not autorotation. Here's a lovely demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek0FrCaogcs&feature=youtu.be

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for these! Prices/status for reference: Status Release Price ----------- --------- ------------ AirDog* Pre-Order Q3 2015 $1,295 HEXO+* Pre-Order Sept 2015 $1,299 IRIS+* Available Now $750 Mind4* Kickstarter Failed $900-$1,489 Lily Pre-Order Feb 2016 $519-$1,019 *Note that all but Lily require a $300 GoPro camera. Price ranges are for Pre-Order vs. Post-Ship pricing. EDIT: Found Lily release date...

They dont require a gopro, you can use $75 Xiaomi that is ~equal to 3+silver. Lily stated video parameters match xiaomi perfectly.

Link?

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#478

If this Guardian video is any hint, this drone needs to be worked on to make it perform like advertised https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td5fZhGNz9M

I was ready to throw my money at this until I saw this. As a developer, I know the pains of alpha and beta demonstrations but this now seems more like a kickerstarter project than finished product. Getting this off the ground (pun intended) looks like its quite aways off.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#479
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars and bikes are directly controlled by humans, and in the case of an emergency, then can perform necessary maneuvers to reduce the damages. Not saying that always happens, but for the most part it does. A drone that loses an engine falls out of the sky and lands on top of anything that is below it, and as of right now, there are no evasive maneuvers that can be executed. Especially for drones that are being used t…

The front fork on your bike is almost certainly not six-nines reliable. If it breaks, you're not doing any evasive maneuvers. Ditto for car electronics. I'd wager that cars fail at a rate higher than 1:million, potentially leaving the driver effectively with no control (literally no control if drive-by-wire, no effective control for many people if power steering and breaking cut out).

Well, also look closely at the most common failure modes for a front fork: (1) the handle bars wiggle out of alignment, which still allows you to brake and stop safely; (2) the axle nuts are loose, in which case you probably won't even notice unless you hit a bump, as the dropouts for removing the front wheel point toward the ground; (3) the steering locks in a particular direction, in which case you still can brake safely and stop. Catastrophic failure of the welds or metal itself is extremely rare, without some advance warning like wobbling or creaking.

To my knowledge, no commonly sold cars are exclusively drive-by-wire for the braking system. If you lose all control in a car, you can turn off the ignition and forceful application of the brakes allows you to stop, even if you lose the power assistance.

By contrast, the most common failure mode for a drone in the air is... it falls out of the sky. That's pretty much the long and the short of it. There is good reason that flying objects should be held to a higher standard of safety.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terminal velocity for these things will not be terribly high.

Probably on the order of 120 MPH or 55.8 meters per second. The drone weighs 1.2 Kilograms. The kinetic energy on impact would be 1800 Joules give or take. A 357 Magnum generates about 873 Joules. The energy we are talking about is not insignificant. I'm actually in favor of allowing people to fly drones with as little restriction as possible but let's not pretend there aren't some risks.

How do you figure 120mph? It's ~1kg and I would guess has a higher surface area relative to mass than a person whose terminal velocity is about 120mph.

In any event, it takes a person 8s to get close to terminal velocity — that's a drop of 300m or so.

The energy involved is certainly non trivial but energy is not the whole story. The densest, heaviest pieces will be the battery and motors.

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