“Yet another ‘follow me’ drone’ says Chris Anderson – after three projects launched this weekend, including his own 3DRobotics’ open source ‘follow me’ feature for android. Extreme sports photography is the most popular application of consumer drones and at first glance it seems like a no-brainer given the success of GoPro, the rise of the sports ‘robot’ camera tripods and the obvious extension of these trends into aerial photography. And really, just what are drones good for aside from extreme sports tracking? Neither the economics nor the regulations favor package delivery and most other inspection operations can’t be commercialized in the US.

GoPro is a classic 10 year overnight success story. GoPro founder Nick Woodman spent years selling cameras out of his van, hustling and hacking, but his product came at a time when the smart phone was disrupting the low end camera market and both the interest and the technologies were there for a waterproof portable sports video camera. Fast forward to 2014 and GoPro’s annual revenues were almost $1 billion just before filing for their IPO in May.

So it’s no surprise that the sports market is where most of the ‘robot tripods’ have headed for, startups like SoloShot and MovenSee. And it’s a logical extension to put a GoPro on a gimbal onto a drone, or something similar and do ‘follow me’ sports action. As well as Hexo, Airdog, and 3D Robotics, there’s also Pocket Drone with a ‘follow me’ mode. Most of these devices are using beacons to achieve tracking, either separate wristbands or the GPS on a phone or tablet. But Parrot may be releasing something later this year that utilizes image tracking instead.

Now here’s where this whole thing doesn’t fly. The more popular drone sports photography or ‘dronies’ get, the less profitable the business is going to become. You can have lots of cameras on the side of the ski field, or on the beach or in the bleachers at your kid’s soccer game. You can even have cameras at your kid’s dance concert, or graduation or at Yosemite or in the back country. At worst it’s an annoyance.

One drone on a ski field is a distraction. Ten drones is a disaster. Imagine ten drones above your kid’s soccer game? How about their dance concert? What about visiting wilderness areas and watching people standing on the edge of a 200′ waterfall watching the drones above and not the drop below.

The big problem is that in the layer between the ground and the clouds, between people’s heads and small aircraft, objects the size and weight of large birds ARE dangerous. Anyone who’s ever been swooped by magpies (Australia) understands the danger of birds! And it’s well documented that bird strike can be deadly to small aircraft.

I predict that the extreme sports photography market for drones is actually a very small shortlived market. It’s almost inherently unable to be regulated as consumer drones are just too cheap and popular to police, which means it’s likely that we’ll see complete bans on drones in any public, government or commercially controlled space. Not just bans on commercial use of drones. I think ski fields and organized sports events will be the first to crumble as litigation and insurance liability issues arise.

While Chris Anderson predicts that the fastest way for drones to become safe is for them to become so small and soft that they pose no physical threat, that’s still a few years off. And as long as drones are larger than dragonflies and cheap enough to be under everyone’s christmas tree, we face the prospect of global regulatory shutdowns and no fly zones rather than regulated uses.

Is this a startup area I recommend? Not unless you’ve got a layer of lawyers a mile high.

*less than two days after posting this the NPS announced blanket ban on drones in all US National Parks

The rise of online crowdfunding platforms over the last decade has  created a whole new pathway for some robot startups. In the process, crowdfunding campaigns have helped to catapult hardware and robots into the public eye, captivating our imaginations. Quite simply, crowdfunding is a form of entertainment just as much as it is a form of fundraising. And learning how to tell your story to others is a critical part of turning a project from imagination to product.

Crowdfunding is not new of course. The principles of crowdfunding are extensions of existing cultural practices. in 1720, the author Jonathon Swift created a low income loan scheme in Ireland that at peak was used by approximately 20% of the population. Dr Mohamed Yunus launched a microfinance program in Bangladesh in 1976 that became the Grameen Bank. The Grameen Bank now has more than 8 million borrowers, primarily women. You can call it a systematic approach to ‘small, short and unsecured’ loans and the internet has made microfinance possible on a whole new level. Although artist oriented crowdfunding sites started as early as 1997, Indiegogo was one of the first of the massively popular crowdfunding sites that came after 2006, when coincidentally, Dr Yunus won a Nobel Prize for the Grameen Bank.

Today, Indiegogo are partnering with Silicon Valley Robotics and Robohub in Robot Launch 2014, the first global online startup competition for robotics. Robotics is still an emerging industry and Robot Launch 2014 is a way of bringing together early stage startups to receive top quality mentoring and other assistance. One of the awards will be for the most popular startup and one of the rewards will be assistance with an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.

As Kate Drane, Indiegogo’s hardware lead says, it’s all about giving people access to funds and resources that are out there, creating community and empowering people to do things for themselves. Indiegogo ran their first hardware startup workshop recently, have an hardware entrepreneur in residence and are building up a library of resources to help crowdfunding campaigns for hardware and robotics startups. Sadly fewer than 50% of campaigns meet their targets – but as platforms take a % of your campaign funds – it’s in their best interests to help you become successful.

Indiegogo is carving out a niche as a supporter of hardware projects, not just creative endeavors. In some respects this seems to be a riskier business – you have to trust that at the end of 6 months or a year, the project that you funded will become a solid working reality. That something will go from imagination to product. Producing real new devices that work as claimed and don’t cost significantly more than projected is not easy. However, compared to say a new band producing a CD, you realize that in one instance the physical object may be easier to create, but the risk is still as great. The final result is still going to be unknown.

That’s where the story telling is important. How well can you explain your vision to the rest of the world and capture their imagination. Robot Launchpad has collected some good resources for storytelling. There are templates for a pitch deck and a one page investor summary. There’s also a link to Nathan Gold, the DEMO coach and now Kauffman NEXT coach, and David Rose’s TED talk. I really believe that telling the right  story is the secret to creating a good product.

At least, Google is certainly getting more roboticists with the Nest acquisition that was announced today, even if smart consumer appliances are just barely on the robotics spectrum. Alongside Google’s recent acquisition of eight robotics companies, there has been a slow and steady flow of robotics talent into the Silicon Valley based behemoth. The small sampling of roboticists I’ve spoken to who are employed at Google have shed little light on future plans, but it is striking that with so many roboticists, now spread across so many different areas, that a unified robot research park seems the least likely outcome. Perhaps Google is collecting libraries and IP instead, in the same way that Wolfram is talking about owning the database of the internet of things.

Continue reading More robots or roboticists for Google with Nest acquisition?

Food drone delivery ideas are taking off all over the place. But is it a business or just an advertizing stunt? Tacocopter was one of the first although still more of a theory than a practice. Stanford Robotics Club is carrying on the mission and delivering subs to students. Joining the ranks are an African beer drone, a UK pizza delivery copter and an aerial sushi tray. The OppiKoppi beer drone will be parachuting beverages to music festival attendees.

The aerial sushi tray at YO! Sushi is also handguided. It’s based on a Parrot AR.drone and as the tray sits on top of the rotors getting your food is a dicey proposition. That’s ok though, the aerial sushi tray is all about creating buzz for a new product line, not replacing wait staff. And most likely, the DomiCopter is an advertizing stunt not a serious logistics play. One of the project partners with Dominos Pizza is a creative agency, T + Biscuits.

Face it, drones are not ideal for payload delivery under most business conditions. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some serious waves taking shape under the froth. Matternet are making a bolder claim. Creating a large net of drone transport for small and critical supplies in areas where there isn’t other infrastructure. Matternet did field trials in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in late 2012. Matternet aim to create “the next paradigm for transportation using a network of unmanned aerial vehicles”.

This sort of disruptive platform play thinking saw Google launch Project Loon in Christchurch a few days ago. Stratospheric balloon arrays bounce internet signals to places previously inaccessible or disaster affected.  Two thirds of the world’s population is still without internet access and Christchurch is a symbolic place to role out the first stages of what is a global plan.

The 2011 earthquake in New Zealand’s 2nd largest city killed 185, destroyed half the city center and 80-90% of the area’s infrastructure. 2 years on many residents remain without permanent housing and the city’s central shopping mall has only just reopened – in a shipping container structure. It’s now estimated that it will take the New Zealand economy 50-100 years to recover from the 40$B repair bill. This makes Christchurch is a good test site for a blue ocean play as residents were used to all the mod cons but are also pragmatic about making do.

Which comes back to the original question, are food delivery drones a good business proposition or just an advertizing stunt? Where the general public love frothy interest pieces about tacocopters, real robotics companies are looking for more serious business plans. But without generating the public interest and acceptance of drone delivery, then more ambitious projects like creating infrastructure in Africa and internet in the stratosphere are unlikely to get off the ground.

Without TacoCopter, Matternet might not be getting investors. Even Forbes magazine thinks that a ‘moon shot’ like Project Loon is far closer to the real business plan for Google than the far more tangible Google Glass. But then, Google Glass is just opening the doors for next year’s uber generation of really augmented devices. Froth travels on waves.