Bird's eye view? A flying camera that follows your car

[Titus]

Maybe this is the next evolution of dashcams?

 

[Gibson99]

nice gimbal/steadicam, but i couldn't figure out which car it was supposed to be following.

 

[kuoh]

It is likely directly over the car being tracked and thus not visible. You can see it hover over a red light around the middle of the clip. Many times when stuck in freeway congestion, I've often wished to have a bird's eye view to figure out whether it was better to exit or wait it out. I've been trapped in 45+ min jams before, especially between Houston / Dallas and Dallas / OKC and this would've been very helpful to make detour or back track decisions earlier.

KuoH

nice gimbal/steadicam, but i couldn't figure out which car it was supposed to be following.

 

[Deleted member 46308]

It is likely directly over the car being tracked and thus not visible. You can see it hover over a red light around the middle of the clip. Many times when stuck in freeway congestion, I've often wished to have a bird's eye view to figure out whether it was better to exit or wait it out. I've been trapped in 45+ min jams before, especially between Houston / Dallas and Dallas / OKC and this would've been very helpful to make detour or back track decisions earlier.

KuoH

I agree live cams like that would be nice, especially where you are talking about

 

[Titus]

It's an interesting quadcopter, I actually have the exact one he is flying. Here's a picture of mine, it's the Yuneec Q500 Typhoon APV platform.

 

[kamkar]

Track me is pretty common on many quadcopters / drones, its a feature of a fjew controllers, to my knowlege both the pixhawk and AMP 2.6 support follow me ( or rather follow the gps enabled smartphone in your pocket connected via OTG cable to a small transmitter )

http://store.3drobotics.com/t/parts/autopilots

Never the less pretty cool stuf, and for sure toys for big boys with a well developed geek genome

There was a video on youtube with some one flying his quadcopter down the strip in Vegas at night, but i fear it have been taken down again.

 

[Maffew]

Issue is battery life, if everyone had one of these it'd be manic and the fact what happens when you're in a tunnel and such? Yeah it's cool for open air on country roads but city driving and such? No chance

 

[Gibson99]

yeah i kept waiting for it to turn and hit one of teh buildings. schadenfreude and all that...

 

[kuoh]

I would envision very short 5 minute duration flights to scout traffic conditions and alternate routes. Not a follow me for an entire trip type situation. But with something that big, it would be a real safety issue, especially with hundreds or thousands flying in uncontrolled airspace. They still need to improve battery life and reduce the size to something like a micro quad, but then we will start seeing privacy and security becoming a concern. Imagine flying one of those with lights off outside a hot neighbor's window. Then again, the NSA probably already has something similar in use in place of those big black helicopters.

KuoH

Issue is battery life, if everyone had one of these it'd be manic and the fact what happens when you're in a tunnel and such?

 

[jokiin]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomous-aerial-camera

 

[kamkar]

Nope 30 minutes is just about it for the most models, or even less, my friends phantom 1 only do 12 minutes or so with the slightly larger batteries he run.

I have my eye on a model with 5 motors and a large battery, but i expect 30 minutes is the best i will get,

There is a few RTR platforms allready, but that route is not cheap as it is now.

I assume if you drive a truck you could have a small box in the back from where you could launch your areal scout, but i do thing the FAA will be red in the face if you fly in a populated area.

ALLso i should mention that none of the 3 models above transmit a live video feed, so for that you will have to add FPV equipment on quadcopter/ drone and in the car to view the feed.

And i am not sure if all 3 above is out of devlopment / funding fase today, i think the Hexo + is.

 

[Gibson99]

ALLso i should mention that none of the 3 models above transmit a live video feed, so for that you will have to add FPV equipment on quadcopter/ drone and in the car to view the feed.

Sj5000+ wifi!

when i'm stuck in traffic, i check the cameras on www.houstontranstar.org. they're updated about every 5 minutes, so it's usually good enough to find out what's wrong. obviously that doesn't work on every road, but for the major freeways where traffic is always an issue, it's great.

 

[kamkar]

That would be the cheap route, most use 2.4 GHZ for controlling the thing and 5.8 GHZ for transmitting video feed, my friend use a 200 mW 5.8 GHZ, and i use a ( highly illigal ) 900 MHZ 2 W transmitter for my RC trucks ( you need some punch when you are 10 cm of the ground in a forrest )

The hardcore use 433 mhz and fly and control a plane 16 km avay i assume more if you can bounce off a repeater, and i do think thats possible.
I use to bounce of our local Yding 2M repeater so i could talk to the whole of DK on 50 milliwatts,from a fist-size dualband radio.

 

[flank]

Who the heck were we following?

 

[Deleted member 46308]

yeah i kept waiting for it to turn and hit one of teh buildings. schadenfreude and all that...

 

[Alex P.]

Cool video, but obviously not very practical for more than 10-15 minutes and for a gusty weather ;-) Might be more practical for a racing track, though - there won't be many people/cars/windows which may become damaged if the drone malfunctions ;-)

 

[Signhere]

Issue is battery life, if everyone had one of these it'd be manic and the fact what happens when you're in a tunnel and such? Yeah it's cool for open air on country roads but city driving and such? No chance

yeah i kept waiting for it to turn and hit one of teh buildings. schadenfreude and all that...

Not really an issue if the program is smart enough for the task.

 

[Alex P.]

I'm sure programming the drones to avoid collision with random objects is not that hard, including adding in a proper radar capabilities. However, if these things will experience sudden failure of all motors or failure of controller board/power source - they will just fall down (they can't even glide like airplanes), and I doubt you'd like a large drone (possibly with some kind of cargo attached to it) hitting the windshield of your car while you're driving in the city (potentially scaring you and causing you to hit something else with your car) or hitting you in the head while you're walking around ;-) Even adding a tiny parachutes might not be enough since the wind can just "throw" the "dead" drone with parachute at car/pedestrian with enough force to damage someone.

So yea, it's extremely unlikely you'll see these flying all over the cities during your lifetime. Unless someone will figure out the way to use some kind of transparent cover (or a forcefield) above the roads/sidewalks/houses ;-)

 

[Signhere]

 

[DT MI]

Is one expected to tip the drone the same as human wait staff?