Volume 1 / Diy Drones News - Bringing you the News Today of the World of Tomorrow / October 1st , 2013
3D Robotics Announces $30 Million Series B Financing
Blog by Chris AndersonSeptember 26th, 2013 by Chris Anderson
SAN DIEGO, Calif., Sept. 26, 2013 — 3D Robotics, the leading open Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) company, today announced a $30 million Series B financing round. The round was co-led by Foundry Group, a new investor, and existing investor True Ventures, along with participation from existing investors O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and SK Ventures. As part of this round, Jason Mendelson of Foundry Group will join the 3D Robotics board of directors.
This round of funding augments a late-2012 Series A round led by True Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. It will enable 3D Robotics to mainstream aerial robotics and surveying, making advanced UAV technology affordable and easy to use for its worldwide customer base of businesses and individuals. Working with its large community of users and open source developers, 3D Robotics has created the industry’s leading open UAV platform, APM, and is now extending that to a new generation of autopilots, software and ready-to-fly multicopter and fixed-wing UAVs.
As part of this funding round 3D Robotics will expand its development and deployment of advanced UAV applications, with a focus on agricultural crop mapping and other commercial aerial survey technology. “The / opportunity to bring ‘big data’ to agriculture through low-cost automated aerial crop surveys could be a game-changer for both farming and the UAV industry alike,” said Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics. “Adding UAVs to the precision agriculture toolkit of a 21st Century farmer gives them the power to use imaging data to not only increase yield, but decrease water use and the chemical load in both food and environment.”
Starting in 2015, AUVSI, the UAV industry trade group, estimates that the first three years of integration of commercial drones into the national airspace will create more than 70,000 jobs in the United States with an economic impact of more than $13.6 billion. International prospects are much larger. ”We’re building out a world-wide sales, service and support model that will help us build long-term relationships with local resellers that can in-turn support their local community requirements for mapping and imaging,” said John Cherbini, 3D Robotics VP of Sales.
3D Robotics also recently announced Iris, the company’s first ready-to-fly, fully-autonomous quadcopter for the consumer market. The lightweight vehicle can conduct hands-off missions and record high definition aerial video, bringing pro-level UAV features at an unprecedented sub-$1,000 price. Iris is now shipping to developers, with consumer sales to begin in November.
In conjunction with Iris, 3D Robotics has extended its exclusive relationship with the PX4 team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), one of the world’s leading UAV research institutions. In collaboration / with ETH, 3D Robotics has announced its most powerful autopilot to date, Pixhawk, which will ship in October. Pixhawk is a new 32-bit open autopilot platform designed for improved ease of use and reliability while offering unprecedented safety features compared to existing solutions.
3D Robotics’ mission is to deliver reliable, easy-to-use autonomous navigation and sensing solutions to customers using land,sea or air based vehicles. 3D Robotics’ open UAV technology, which is in use by tens of thousands of customers already, delivers pro-level aerial robotics features at consumer-level prices to bring UAV applications to mainstream markets.
3D Robotics is a privately-held North American company with offices in Berkeley, San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.
For more information on the company visit: http://www.3drobotics.com
- Page 2 - Diy Drones Newspaper - Volume 1 - October 1st, 2013 -
GoPro Hero 3+ Announced
/Hackathon and Drone conference in NYC
Blog by Alan Sanchez / Blog by Gabriella LevineGoPro just announced its new camera, the Hero3+. I am really interested to see how much smaller it really is than the hero3. Longer battery, sharper lens, smaller, 720p at 120fps sounds really good to me. The buttons on the enclosure seem bigger, I hope so, the old ones were a pain to press. Anyone getting one? /
DroidPlanner v1.0.0 [Update]
Blog By Arthur BenemannThe update
If you follow the alpha versions you know we added a lot of good stuff to it. The new version has the following updates, probably the bold ones matter the most to you ( v1.0.0 over 0.14.2):
Droidplanner v1.0.0
● No new changes to the code-base, just setting a milestone
Droidplanner v0.16.0
● Bluetooth Support
● Fixing layout problems with the Survey window / Droidplanner v0.15.0
● New Waypoint Editor
● New Survey Interface
● Support for Physical Joysticks
● Chinese Translation
● Code Re-factoring
● Minor fixes (please consult GIT history)
/ Drones & Aerial Robotics Conference, at NYU on Oct 11th-13th.
30% off code for DIYDrones: DARCFRIEND30
DARC is the first ever full-spectrum drone conference. Join in conversation with CEO's from major robotics companies (Parrot, 3DRobotics, and more), researchers doing cutting edge work with agile robots (Vijay Kumar of the GRASP Lab, and more), and aerospace veterans (including former fighter pilot and Director of MIT's Humans and Automation Lab, Missy Cummings).
DARC combines a DIY/maker event, a day of curated talks and live drone demos, and a participatory tech-policy conference that's tackling big questions about how we might integrate drones into everyday life. Anyone interested in the technology or cultural implications of drones should attend.
Website: http://droneconference.org/
Registration: https://droneconference.org/register/
The third day of the conference (Oct 13th) there will be a hackathon at ITP that NodeCopter and Parrot are sponsoring. We're giving away at least 3 Parrot AR drones to the top three hacks.
More info on the hackathon: http://nodecopter.com/2013/new-york/oct-13
To register for the hackathon: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/8293334587
- Page 3 - Diy Drones Newspaper - Volume 1 - October 1st, 2013 -
The new forums need YOU!
/'Simpler' Andropilot 1.8 released to production
Blog By Gary Mortimer / Blog By Kevin HesterBy now everybody must be aware of the excellent new wiki's that the team has been putting hours of work into and really doing a fine job of it. You might have also seen the Community drop down menu at the top of the page at http://www.ardupilot.com under that you will see a links to here and APM Forum, this is where our forums will migrate to over time.
Stefan has done an excellent job of improving the functionality of the forums, making it less spammy in the process.
Its attracting questions from wiki users now and as such we need some more of the experts that hang out here to be on hand to help new users there.
The platform that this website uses is about to undergo a major change and this will give us an opportunity to make this site a little more curated with the best of peoples builds and ideas getting more attention.
So come on over to the new forums and lend a hand. /
The main features compared to the last GA release:
● Substantially simplified user interface (the sidebar now gets hidden by default in landscape mode - if you want it back, just choose 'Show Sidebar' in the menu). Most interesting data floats over the map view.
● Bluetooth and on-screen joystick improvements for safety and response rate
● More time spent with the profiler, should be even faster than old versions
● Special UIs for phones with small screens
If you would like to use the bluetooth or on screen joysticks, please be extra careful because that code has been used by less than 2% of the users. If you need to grab control away with the RC xmitter, just toggle the mode switch or press the cancel button on the tablet/joystick.