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Robotics

Video Drones Underwater, Drones on Wheels (Video) 18

Posted by Roblimo from the drones-above-and-drones-below dept.
Video no longer available.
Rocky Mountain Unmanned Systems seems to be primarily in the business of selling aerial 'copter drones ranging in price from sub-$100 up into $1000s. But there they were at the 2015 CES (Consumer Electronics Show), showing off a submarine drone and a wheeled drone. These products don't seem to be on the company's website or even on their Facebook page quite yet. Jon McBride, the person manning their CES booth, told Timothy these products would be around soon, as in February. But it looks like a bit of extra patience is in order, although you can contact Jon through the company's Facebook page (his suggestion) if you have an urgent need for an underwater or wheeled drone for your business or government agency -- or even just for fun.

Timothy Lord : John, a lot of people here have flying drones, you’ve got a few of the quad copters around here, but could you explain two other things you got here, one is that submarine—let’s start with that, talk about the Seawolf.

Jon McBride : I’ve been very excited about the release of the Seawolf. The Seawolf initially started and created by Thunder Tiger Robotics to get that footage down below of course water, and as well possibly to do inspections of oils and pipes and piers and boats. So the problem that we ran into is that at the hobby level was tethered to the operator, so from the ground or from the pier you can only do so far and you can definitely only go so many times around the boat before we start to get into any issues with that, we’ve just right off the get go we were capable of taking our GoPro and actually being able to waterproof the case already that it comes in, but have a connection that comes out to transmit via the cord, so that you can see real time.

Timothy: How does that signal then get to the operator?

Jon: So currently like I said, it’s all tethered and it will connect into hard wired into the video screen, so if we go deeper into that and try to make it wireless on the back of the wire to the transmitter we do have wireless pickup, and that is being transmitted as well with RC operation I have the capability of controlling the sub, and then the other ability to see the screen, most of you geek kids are going to go well, how is it possible to be able to get through the water since we’re running 5.8 gig on the video transmission, and 2.4 gig on the control transmission, so we’ve taken the tether part and then came up with an actual microbuoy that kind of looks like a little sub, this device will float on top tethered to the bottom, and then we have a surface ability to transmit and move the video signal and control signal. So that makes it a little bit simpler, good and bad again, that if it decides to go lower than water of course we’re going to probably lose transmission at one point and another. So this maybe – this part maybe just a little bit larger so that it keeps and sustains, and we we’ll probably have because the cable isn’t super thick because it’s normally just dragged to the water that if you have any wave ability and you are at the lower surface that it isn’t pulling and tugging really hard, so we’re hoping to develop that a little bit further.

Timothy: Talk about lighting...

Jon: So, of course, GoPro does a pretty good job with low level lighting, but once you kind of get the FTV screen moving and going it’s difficult for try and see exactly what that sees if you get to a certain depth, it’s very difficult to get that video feed and see exactly. So we’re trying to get a very low power, low consumption LED unit on the front here, so that it’ll be a pull-on snap-on unit. That would be the general idea and have it be entirely independent from the actual control battery inside which one is a lead acid battery currently. And then have that light ability so we can see a little bit better, yeah. It’s very important.

Timothy: So you would you be making a custom circuit board for that?

Jon: Correct, yeah. So we’re working on that and hopefully glass on the front end, so even here at the show you can see a couple of nicks and smacks and cracks and we certainly don’t want that to happen, so we will try to make that available to us.

Timothy: Talk about power, you mentioned that it is a lead acid battery in the sub itself.

Jon: It is.

Timothy: And the GoPro has its own power as well?

Jon: Correct.

Timothy: Is that, so you have got a power cable coming off of it.

Jon: That’s correct.

Timothy: And does that mean you can draw from the sub’s own power supply.

Jon: No, what this is for specifically is to pull your data off, so we have encased enclosed to cover the USB, so that’s how we’re going to get our picture from the thing without having to disassemble the whole sub. So that’s kind of what it’s doing. Until we get a little bit better we’re talking about doing lithium polymer batteries inside the sub for control, power and everything else, currently we are just running the lead acid. What’s nice about the lead acid is that it’s heavy, so when it is heavy, its natural buoyancy is much better. So we lighten it up too much and it’ll be like this thing, just floating on the top, won’t be able to get down fast enough, so that’s the idea.

Timothy: What about the capabilities how far it can go on a charge, and how deep can you push it?

Jon: With current materials made right now, we can get to about 30 feet, 30 feet is typically pretty good for most hobby grade type submarines, if we push a little bit further than that, and still trying to get the cost not to be a very expensive with the materials that’s we’re trying to stay with that, so cost-wise we’re trying with – let me see we’re trying to keep a pelican case, the cable, the video transmitter, the sub, the little piece, we’re trying to keep this upwards and lower of $1,500 to $2,000 and I hope that that’s where we’ll end up being, we’re still doing some development here, the lightening, the apparatus possibly redevelop on the 3D printing here to get this to cover more, that’s what we’re going to be working on.

Timothy: What is the shell itself made of?

Jon: Just regular flex and Plexiglas, so that’s basically what it’s all made of, so

Timothy: And how many minutes can you operate it with its current battery system?

Jon: Now currently I can do about 45 minutes of operation and that’s if we’re not doing full speed, full throttle... it can sit in a position for as long as that battery will go. So 45 minutes to an hour of operation, yeah.

Timothy: Let’s talk about your other vehicle over here, I think it's equally interesting,.

Jon: Sure.

Timothy: You have got a terrestrial and so you are going skipping the air entirely for these two vehicles

Jon: Absolutely. So this is the Aspire, the Aspire also created by Thunder Tiger. Simply again taking a hobby unit and making it into a much better FTV solution, this could be used for cop inspections, building inspections, again, not full roverish it’s not anything new, but what we do have is a full stabilized gimbal that can rotate a full 360 degrees operated by a second man, so that can be cameraman winging around and then you have operator of the truck. Of course this has about, I mean the truck itself can go 65 miles an hour, but we’ve governed it down to about 35 miles an hour so that it doesn’t flip over very easily if operator takes a hard turn or a hard corner.

Timothy: I hope it comes with a manual on how to govern that.

Jon: Yes, it does, I think yeah, it does. Yeah. So this increase in the voltage by increasing voltage and increasing time and increasing everything else we can get a great – a great unit they can do action shots on the ground and that’s basically what we’re trying to do here.

Timothy: Even though it’s small to send this 65 miles per hour, you are still going to take a fair amount of power, how long can you actually operate it?

Jon: Even at the lower level of 35 miles an hour, we’ve done that for about 20 to 25 minutes, so if you going to be running at 60 miles an hour that really jumps down that like 10 or 12 at best. But even moving something at 65 miles an hour you have a limited amount of space that you can do that at. So

Timothy: It must have pretty generous control range?

Jon: Right.

Timothy: How far can you control?

Jon: I can get upwards of half a mile away, so and that’s line of sight so it would not be very good behind buildings and around stuff so, that might be some with further development, that should be able to penetrate throughout buildings and around hills and whatnot, so yeah.

Timothy: What’s your timeline in making this available?

Jon: Available next month, same with the submarine, so we’re going to try to get that here in the middle of February, and have that ready to go, so

Timothy: If the submarine is $1500 to $2000 ideally,

Jon: Yes.

Timothy: How much will this one cost?

Jon: Not more than $1,500 just what we’re going to try to do, so – yeah.

Timothy: Ifpeople want to learn more, do you have a website?

Jon: I do. So at rockymountainunmannedsystems.com, we have that available mostly retail, but most people get hold of me through Facebook page at rockymountainunmannedsystems on our Facebook page, so if you want to directly talk to me, send me a message, ask questions that’s the perfect place to do it.

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Drones Underwater, Drones on Wheels (Video) More

Drones Underwater, Drones on Wheels (Video)

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