Sunday, April 1, 2012

We're featured in a nice AP Drone article!

A nice article by AP's Marcus Wohlsen went out today.  Andreas and I met with him last last week and demoed some of the work we've been doing here.

Best pictures:


BERKELEY, CALIF. (AP) - Sharp-eyed dog walkers along the San Francisco Bay waterfront may have spotted a strange-looking plane zipping overhead recently that that looked strikingly like the U.S. stealth drone captured by Iran in December. 
A few key differences: The flying wing seen over Berkeley is a fraction of the size of the CIA’s waylaid aircraft. And it’s made of plastic foam. But in some ways it’s just like a real spy plane. 
The 4 1/2-foot-wide aircraft, built by software engineers Mark Harrison and Andreas Oesterer in their spare time, can fly itself to specified GPS coordinates and altitudes without any help from a pilot on the ground. A tiny video camera mounted on the front can send a live video feed to a set of goggles for the drone’s view of the world below.
[...] 
If you've come here by way of that article, welcome!  Check out our youtube channels if you want to see some videos of the work we've been doing:

And here's some links to past posting that might be of general interest to people curious about homemade drones:


And some representative build details.  If you're interested in more details, there's plenty on the site or feel free to drop me a line.

The plane is a Ritewing Zephyr II, with an ArduPilot Mega control board. Lots of details here.
The quad is a RadicalRC Stinger, with an ArduPilot Mega 2 control board.  Lots of details here.




1 comment:

  1. Great work, Mark. Been following for about six months and learning the ropes of multirotor and fpv myself. Maybe some day when I am in the Bay area we'll get a chance for a meet-up.

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