Drone in a Forest: Smart Sensors at Work
This post is a bit of a follow-up to a previous one where I showed Intel’s CEO showcasing a drone with some embedded technology from one company I co-founded.
Here you will see the same drone system in a much more challenging outdoor environment: a forest. Our piece of technology, mounted on the bottom, is used as a precision, very fast altimeter.
Our distance sensors are based on the time-of-flight principle, using infrared light. In layman's terms, this means that by measuring the time it takes for light to hit a reflecting surface and come back to the sensor, we obtain a distance measure.
In the forest environment, the technological challenge for our sensor is to get precise distance data in changing environmental light conditions, while flying over different materials with variable reflecting properties…
The drone maker was acquired by Intel in early 2016.
Enjoy the video!
Follow for follow like for like?
well sure. got my follow. i love following people that are interested in the same things as me. if you like this post and i do hope you can add to my life. maybe u will post something i like. this is not twitter. i follow people cause they offer me good info not because they vote for me, but i do love when they do.
I see you're new here. twitter games dont work here; we like real life legit links and info.
I follow because u like this post not because u want a follow.
but the theory is very sound
Wow, that's really cool. BUT to be honest i saw that on Star Wars so why didn't you use the lasers?
Lasers are much more expensive, heavy and not fast enough for this task...especially if you need eye-safe performance.
That's the best reason. It's neat contraption, it's cool it dodges the trees and all. I guess in the future it will drop supplies to forest firefighters.
Can it be calibrated to work in smokey conditions?
Let's say that (subject to funding :-) I believe we can engineer a system suitable for smoky conditions, possibly using a mix of technologies.
how many steem dollars we talking here? lol
🌀
I would not throw a figure on the table out of the blue, but if one sets a specific operational goal, an estimate can be done...and perhaps one could crowdfund the project on steemit :-)
my mind is going wild with the idea of an UAV that autonomously dodges trees and branches. the other uses like crowd control and getting into buildings for search and rescue... like that is amazing.
It is :-)
I'm 'a drone guy' .. so we had to discuss this post in this week's episode of SteemitTalk Podcast - Thank you for sharing!
Link: https://steemit.com/steemit/@giftedgaia/steemit-talk-podcast-013-10-15-2016-open-mic-night-steemit-game-night-and-highly-evolved-spider-overlords
I love drones, so thanks for this great post!