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Your own personal drone
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If you go back and the read the congressional record for yesterday’s session of the U.S. Senate, you’ll see the word "drone" mentioned 489 times. Sen. Rand Paul held the floor for almost 13 hours yesterday, filibustering President Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to run the CIA.
Brennan was confirmed, but Sen. Paul was questioning how the administration uses drones, specifically against Americans. It was a debate about the military use of drone technology but there is a small and growing civilian market in drones.
No jet engines. No hellfire missiles.
So far, just cameras mounted on a thing that looks like an Erector Set with small rotors on top. About the size of the top of a small coffee table. You can get an idea of what these civilian drones look like by clicking through the slide show above.
“Ten years ago, this was unobtainable. You know, this stuff was military industrial stuff, tens of millions for each sensor and today it’s pennies and it’s in your pocket," said Chris Anderson, the CEO of the drone-making firm 3D Robotics, who was until fairly recently the editor of Wired magazine.
Anderson said his business model is simple -- “the beauty of hardware is that the business model could not be more head-slappingly obvious. You charge more than it costs. That’s it.”
The company posts their designs online and charge around $500 to $700 to purchase a pre-built drone from them. For Anderson, the future of drones is about looking beyond military use and the stigma attached to them.
“Remember the Internet used to be a military technology. Computers were invented to calculate artillery trajectory. We forget that. GPS was designed for those cruise missiles," said Anderson. He points to a tradition civilians repurposing military technologies for personal uses. “And so if we do our job right, someday, people won’t associate drone use with military because the vast majority of drones that they see will be civilian.”
And when it comes to privacy concerns, he’s not worried. “How do you feel about camera phones? These are just camera phones with wings.”
So what will fill the R&D space of 3D Robotics in 10 years? Anderson hopes that first and foremost, we’ll forget that drones used to be military. Instead, drones will be commonplace -- he likens them to a personal computer.
“We’re at the level right now where it’s clear that you can have such a thing as a personal drone, that drones can be cheap and easy," he said.
.@kairyssdal flying a drone at @3drobotics vine.co/v/bHMP91DTY5O
— Marketplace(@MarketplaceAPM) March 4, 2013
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"... the beauty of hardware is that the business model could not be more head-slappingly obvious. You charge more than it costs. That’s it." I guess I've been doing it wrong all this time. I always thought it was important to have customers willing to pay for the product.
I am amazed by the negative responses here. I am a long time NPR listener and a satisfied customer of 3D Robotics. I fly computer controlled multirotors with GPS and HD cameras under the rules of the FAA and AMA. Most fishermen spend more money on their hobbies than I do. Really. Radio controlled model aircraft have been flying with cameras and 'falling out of the sky' for more than 40 years and nobody much complained until they confused MQ-9 Reapers carrying hellfire missiles on US sanctioned assassination missions into sovereign countries with a 1-3 lb. $200-$400 hobby multirotors built with parts from Home Depot. Really? Kai's feature may be entertaining but I am afraid it did little to inform. The comments here are largely emotional and uninformed. Beside the hobby/entertainment angle, nobody talked about the beneficial uses of 'drones' from 3D Robotics for things like environmental monitoring and research, salmon counting, search and rescue, firefighting applications, low-cost mapping, and more. Whaddaya say, Kai? Can you tell the other side of the story?
People are so fickle and afraid. These have been around for decades you just didn't know it because the media didn't sensationalize it at the time and make everyone scared. They are called Radio controlled airplanes and helicopters and anyone could have put a camera on them just as easily. These are radio controlled multi-rotors with gps capability that still need to follow the AMA and FAA rules the main one being that they need to stay within line of site of the operator. So stop your whining and get a life.
I thought Kai did an admirable job of hitting Anderson with the truth: this is just plain creepy. Anderson uses a classic straw-man argument to defend his idea: all technology is initially rejected. This is obviously not so; only bad, ill-designed, or creepy technology.
Anderson and his cohorts should perhaps consider moving on. This idea just might be the final straw in a coming backlash against the destruction of all privacy -- not to mention humanity -- coming from those who would saturate our lives with technology and use it to mine our personal information for their commercial gain.
Oh, goodie: a brave new frontier for the NRA (no gummint haza rite ta keep ME from pistolizin' MY drone!)
And think of the jobs this will sponsor as the FAA burgeons to keep all these little pieces of private property from running into each other and raining down on the rest of us miserable earthlings.
Yet another great way to use the at-home-drone! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151316111059117&set=a.10150278...
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