FM transmitters and receivers, the good ol days.
Today we think in terms of binding our radios to our receivers and never think twice about flipping on our radios when we're at the flying field. Our radios won't interfere with our friend's radios. It's never a consideration. That's the beauty of flying on narrowband at 2.4GHz. Simple, inexpensive worry free flying.
And yet there was a time not too long ago, in the dark ages, back before lovingly supplied us with our electronics when Radio Control meant dealing with the FM frequency. We mostly flew in the 72MHz range with 49 channels at our disposal and up to 90 channels if we had radios that could handle the extended range. For the Ham Radio operators, they had their own special channels. Instead of discussing the merits of AFHDS and Tactic SLT we were debating the merits of single conversion versus dual conversion crystals. Yes, crystals. Your radio transmitter and receiver had to have have matching crystals. And this is where things got even more specific. Certain radios took certain crystals and what worked and what didn't was hard to keep track of. If you followed the instruction laid out by the radio manufacturer or the guy behind the counter at the hobby store you were fine. But, once you got to the field you had to check to make certain that nobody was on the same channel you planned to be on, or you could accidentally crash a plane.
No such thing as a dead technology, it just goes out of fashion.
I'm of the opinion that technology never really dies, it just has phases. Right now the idea is that when you put a plane or drone in the air you want exclusive flying privileges. you don't want anybody else having control of your plane, even for a moment. But, I see that changing in the not too distant future.
What's all the rage right now is flying first person view (FPV). Instead of watching a plane fly around in circles above you the thrill is attaching a camera to the plane from the view of the camera. This is a new level of trust in technology. Though they are still controlling the plane via radio they don't have to maintain a view of it from the ground. This allows people to fly the plane miles away. And this is a lot of fun, for now. But like anything where people look to push the boundaries, this won't be enough. And besides there is a limit the cameras can broadcast and the radios can work. If the radio connection ever fails there is a "Return to home feature" which will send the plane back to where it started from.
FPV, the next generation
What's all the rage right now is flying first person view (FPV). Instead of watching a plane fly around in circles above you the thrill is attaching a camera to the plane from the view of the camera. This is a new level of trust in technology. Though they are still controlling the plane via radio they don't have to maintain a view of it from the ground. This allows people to fly the plane miles away. And this is a lot of fun, for now. But like anything where people look to push the boundaries, this won't be enough. And besides there is a limit the cameras can broadcast and the radios can work. If the radio connection ever fails there is a "Return to home feature" which will send the plane back to where it started from.
Beyond FPV
The next thing past FPV is the realization that you don't need to control a plane. As long as you can assist with launching it and be around when it lands a computer can do the rest. Intel Corporation is already ahead of the curve in respects to computer controlled flight. A very practical application is surveying land. A small plane with a camera and a computerized course can do an amazingly precise job, cost effectively One 45 minute flight over an area can render photorealistic 3D modeling.
Intel already has something called the Aero Compute Board which is a computerized flight controller. The good news is that it's open source the bad news is that the board isn't for sale by itself, yet. But, mark my words, this is the next wave in radio controlled flight.
Here Intel demostrates it with a drone. Intel is selling it as part of a kit with fairly cheap and readily available accessories. No idea how much it will cost.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/videos/preview-of-the-intel-aero-ready-to-fly-drone
One other thing Intel is also working on which is kinda a big deal if they can get it to work a bit faster is "Real Sense."
The first question is why is Intel working on such a project? Intel is a multi-billion dollar a year corporation that has real things it works on. However, when Intel missed it's shot at the smartphone revolution it didn't want to be left behind. There are a few concepts that are hard for people to agree to such as driverless cars and drones flying around us all the time. However, this reality is coming. Amazon has already said it plans on having drones deliver packages. You can rest assured that people won't be flying them.
In the short term, the next phase of RC flying will be going beyond where FPV can go. Where I live there are mountains very close to my home that prohibits me from getting line-of-sight any further west than a mile. What is absolutely cool would be to layout a path on Google maps of where I want it to fly and have the plane fly it's mission like we've seen in the Intel video above. When it's done it would head back to where I am and I would take over control once the plane is range. I would want to do this to capture video of places I can't get to.
The next logical step
If I start a plane off in flight and the computer takes over the flight why not fly it to someone else who has a remote? I can literally see flying clubs where one person starts a flight and it flies to another person who takes over the flight with their radio and lands the plane, charges or swaps the battery and sends it on to the next person in the club. The only problem is that you can't do this if a plane is bound to one remote This is where FM comes back to life.
Here Intel demostrates it with a drone. Intel is selling it as part of a kit with fairly cheap and readily available accessories. No idea how much it will cost.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/videos/preview-of-the-intel-aero-ready-to-fly-drone
One other thing Intel is also working on which is kinda a big deal if they can get it to work a bit faster is "Real Sense."
What does this all mean?
The first question is why is Intel working on such a project? Intel is a multi-billion dollar a year corporation that has real things it works on. However, when Intel missed it's shot at the smartphone revolution it didn't want to be left behind. There are a few concepts that are hard for people to agree to such as driverless cars and drones flying around us all the time. However, this reality is coming. Amazon has already said it plans on having drones deliver packages. You can rest assured that people won't be flying them.
In the short term, the next phase of RC flying will be going beyond where FPV can go. Where I live there are mountains very close to my home that prohibits me from getting line-of-sight any further west than a mile. What is absolutely cool would be to layout a path on Google maps of where I want it to fly and have the plane fly it's mission like we've seen in the Intel video above. When it's done it would head back to where I am and I would take over control once the plane is range. I would want to do this to capture video of places I can't get to.
The next logical step
If I start a plane off in flight and the computer takes over the flight why not fly it to someone else who has a remote? I can literally see flying clubs where one person starts a flight and it flies to another person who takes over the flight with their radio and lands the plane, charges or swaps the battery and sends it on to the next person in the club. The only problem is that you can't do this if a plane is bound to one remote This is where FM comes back to life.
No comments:
Post a Comment