Chris Anderson on the future of drones and the open source hardware movement
The O’Reilly Hardware Podcast: Value in the data, not the drone.
Collage of orangutan nests in SE Asian rain forests taken by cameras on board Conservation Drones. (source: By Lian Pin Koh on Flickr)
What happens when a hobbyist technology goes commercial? In this episode of the Hardware Podcast, Chris Anderson, founder and CEO of 3D Robotics, talks about his company’s journey from “a DIY company to a consumer electronics company to an enterprise software company.”
Discussion points:
Learn faster. Dig deeper. See farther.
- We’re still calling them drones.
- The drone as a data platform for everything from agriculture to infrastructure.
- Sense-and-avoid, the ability to detect obstacles and navigate around them, is the most pressing technological issue facing drones today.
- The open source roots of modern drones, the sensitive matter of taking some aspects closed-source, and Anderson’s leadership in Dronecode
- When it becomes efficient to manufacture in China (Anderson says it’s at 10,000 units)
This week’s click spirals:
- Chris Anderson: The reason many products end up in 99-cent stores? Forecasting errors and overproduction.
- Jon Bruner: A breathtakingly thorough summary of “sovereign citizen” tax-avoidance schemes by Alberta Associate Chief Justice John D. Rooke. This was the first I’d heard of “vexatious litigants.”
- David Cranor: The experience of drinking Soylent for the first time.