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Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Dronecode Project
garymortimer writes with news about a project that hopes to create an open source code platform for drones. "The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced the founding of the Dronecode Project. The Project will bring together existing open source drone projects and assets under a nonprofit structure governed by The Linux Foundation. The result will be a common, shared open source platform for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Founding members include 3D Robotics, Baidu, Box, DroneDeploy, Intel, jDrones, Laser Navigation, Qualcomm, SkyWard, Squadrone System, Walkera and Yuneec. Dronecode includes the APM UAV software platform and associated code, which until now has been hosted by 3D Robotics, a world leader in advanced UAV autopilot and autonomous vehicle control. The company was co-founded by Chris Anderson, formerly editor-in-chief of Wired"
That should make it a lot easier to hack, and sieze control of the drones!
SkyNet!
I recently tried to install the latest release of Fedora on my workstation. It came with something called "systemd". I hadn't heard about this systemd thing before, but I sure learned a lot about it while trying to install Fedora!
To keep this long story short, I had been running openSUSE 11.4 on my workstation for several years. It worked great. It detected all of my hardware, and everything worked really well. But it was getting old, and I needed to make sure OpenSSL and bash and all the other vulnerable software was updated. A friend at work said that Fedora was good, so I decided to try it out.
What a painful experience! The installer was awful, but I finally got through it. Then when I went to boot my system for the first time, it got like maybe half way through before showing these error messages mentioning "systemd". Having no idea what that is, I had to google it. Well, that taught me a lot! At least I then knew I wasn't alone in having problems with systemd.
I managed to get a few of the error messages fixed up, but it was really hard to diagnose the problems because the log files aren't easy to access. Like you have to use some tools to read them. So I gave up. I only had one day to get my Linux system working again, and Fedora clearly wasn't working well at all. It was the worst Linux experience I had ever had, and I've been using Linux on and off for many years.
I was going to use a newer version of openSUSE, but as I read more about it I learned that openSUSE now uses systemd, too! Well, I sure wasn't going to go through the same ordeal that I went through with Fedora. I just didn't have the time for that!
So I am now using a Linux distro called Slackware. I don't like it as much as openSUSE but at least it doesn't have systemd and it installed and worked without any problems. If I didn't have to use Linux for some of the software I run, I would have probably just bought Windows 8.1 and installed that instead, I was so angry with Linux, systemd and Fedora.
I've never had as much trouble with Linux software as I had with systemd. If I couldn't get systemd to work properly on my workstation, which can and does run other Linux code perfectly, will anyone using Linux on drones run into the same instability and problems that I ran into when I tried to use a distro that uses systemd?
Why not any other particular field? This seems like a userspace concern and slightly out of line with the other Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects.
I'm looking forward to the branch of development that can take out other drones such as Amazon Monopolizers and assorted police / military drones. Possible features include pointing lasers to 'paint' them for arduino controlled ground based rapidfire paintball targeting, spraying crazy glue or webbing into their rotors, and of course flipping the damn things over. Set up a hawk's perch with some solar panels & magnetic inductance charger, fella could have a good time in Vegas w a few of these.
--hongpong.com
this would be cooler if the drone(s) communicated and were tracked via Meshnet(s).
Drones kill brown babies. Aerobots deliver tacos.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
they want their open source drone platform back. http://robots-everywhere.com/p...
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
No no no, drones deliver tacos. These other things are Terminators.
T as in Terrestrial. Not having been much into UAV's, to me, the most impressive UTV is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They might as well invite the NSA as you can bet they will be all over this code and group anyway. It reminds me of the guy who built a cheap and effective cruise missile. First they shut him down in the US so he moved I believe to New Zealand where the US governemnt again shut him down. The missles were not armed and the guy hand machined small jet engines to push the missles and laptops for internal guidance systems. In essence he took a two million dollar machine and reduced it to an effective machine for about 50K. . Although the military does not get the point we are now building weapons we can not afford to fire and engaging in modes of war that will bankrupt our nation. Not meaning to sound unfeeling but war does reduce to the bucks spent to bodies torn apart no matter how we like to see it. This was the same as the tragedy in Vietnam. We could have fired one good nuclear missle for a couple of million bucks and saved over a decade of violence and billions upon billions of money would have been saved and on top of that we would have had zero wounded and zero dead soldiers. That war would have ended in the first ten minutes. Notions of kinder and gentler wars may be counter productive or maybe the question is quiter and gentler to who?
Drones don't need a full OS RT or otherwise in most cases. Maybe to make a nice desktop to control remotely, but not on the drone. They don't have that many complications when fully automated honestly. Trying to make Linux cool by shoving it on to devices and sponsors 'hawking' over priced processors and questionable security is not a good thing.
Just be careful with the kill command.