Far too many drone companies have been involved in a journey that has been characterised by a short honeymoon. From an African standpoint, the journey was always delayed.  Most African drone companies have been involved in training initiatives , environmental initiatives and consumer journalism .  But the bulk of the drone development was performed in Asia , USA and Europe .   So it's no surprise that Venture capitalist invested mainly in Asian and American companies.  But given the recent reports and the foreclosure of big startups last year , the drone landscape has changed.  So a question needs to be asked, what would happen to up-coming drone manufacturing companies based in Africa? Below are three key aspects that we believe drone manufacturers need to take into consideration going to the next 3 to 5 years. Focus on Functionality One of the biggest elements when it comes to drone development is the ability to focus not just on the e...

We are very excited to bring to universities and higher education institutes across Africa (and in some part of Europe), our internship programme. In line with our vision to grow a spirit of hope for talented students who need guidance (and want to work on exciting projects with business value), the objectives of the internship are as follows: Improve the industry-readiness for the selected students. Currently only the following disciplines are supported: Engineering (mechanical, aerospace, electronics, mechatronics), Computer Science. Currently only 3rd-year and above students are eligible. Expose students to professional methods of research and development. Increase the probability of employment through gaining valuable work-experience. Guide students through real-world problem-solving, product engineering and commercialization. Combine flexible hours with working from home. This programme is incentivised through output-based remuneration and student referral. If you ...

There's a lot of debate around the economic suitability of drones for the delivery of the goods as a direct competitor to traditional trucks and delivery vans. There's an article written by Flexport which highlights two crucial factors that makes drones delivery of general goods not feasible, even in the near future: (1) route density and (2) drop size. Route density is the number of drop-offs you can make on a delivery route and drop-size is the number of parcels per stop on that delivery route. Given the strict airspace regulations on drone size and weight, it has become quite evident, particularly in the African context, that the delivery of general goods will not be an economically viable option even though the obvious need might say otherwise.  However, further analysis and demonstration have shown, from companies like Matternet and others, that the transport of the time-sensitive and high-value parcels (legal-documents, medicine samples, high-value spices...

We've reviewed a report by Deloitte discussing issues on how to leverage and protect Africa's innovation for future growth and economic stability. It was highlighted that the traditional focus on exploiting commodities hasn't yielded the redistribution of wealth or improve the standard of living for those working in that sector. Moreover, over 75% of economic activities happen in the informal sector (Nigeria statistics), which is exposed to the volatility that commodity markets are subjected to, which is detrimental to the impoverished communities. One of the major points which directly relates to our mission objective is the following quote from the report: " Yet, as much as innovation is important, there needs to be more focus on the final outcome of innovative solutions. "  In Africa, innovation is part of the daily survival. But it's usually unstructured, very often short-sighted and localized in it's application. Moreover, the growing yout...

As a student completing my final year, I vividly remember the insatiable desire to just complete the degree, graduate and kiss university life goodbye! Even though I actually enjoyed my course and the fact this had been my dream since my second year of high school, I felt I had enough. At that point, the thought of pursuing a postgraduate degree was the further thing from my mind. Such psychological damage was based on the opinions (albeit biased) that academics, the professors and full-time researchers that taught us, seemed detached from reality and their expectations from the feeble and vulnerable students, were beyond unreasonable. I vividly remember the insatiable desire to just complete my course, graduate and kiss university life goodbye! Even though I saw myself pursuing a postgraduate degree, the notion of having to face the same ordeal of my last few months as an undergraduate, was enough to convince me otherwise. I just didn't see myself having to deal with t...

The objective for this milestone was to integrate the same model functionality developed and analyzed within the Matlab/Simulink environment into a mature environment that will be able to test most functionalities of the Flight controller software that will be flashed for real-flight testing. The decision was to either migrate the Ardupilot (in this case ArduCopter ) software into the Matlab environment or integrate the highly nonlinear quadcopter model with flapping dynamics into the Ardupilot environment. The former option would mean no easy integration with Mission Planner and the real-time sofware-in-the-loop ( SITL ) testing tool (which also includes the infrastructure to communicate with the Flightgear 3D visualization environemt, while the later with make use of singular environment although the software development effort would quite tedious and error-prone. It was chosen to go with the first option as this was thought to be lead to more mature verification method prior...

So i've been looking over the last few months how I can get to fly more of my quadcopter drone for both research and leisure. The major drawback of the 1.6kg drone is its form factor at the time. Being a H-frame quad with cross rotor length of over 80cm, I had to purchase 110L storage bin to keep it safe and damage-free. After much research I ended up a natural solution that would involved just a steel saw and good eye for detail. The other (obvious) requirement for this folding mechanism is that it should make the deployment time as fast as possible with a few if not no special equipment. This led the the solution of cutout the area around the second bolt of each arm to allow pivoting action on the first bolt. The cutout should also be such that bolt hole remains to be used as a stopper to maintain symmetry along the quad x and y axis. The high contact friction will be used to ensure the arms remain in the required position throughout a particular flight. After much sawing and...

Posted by Chris Anderson on April 25, 2017 at 7:00am  View Blog . The PX4/Dronecode team and Drotek have been working on the next generation of Pixhawk autopilots, and you can now see a preview of that with the Pixhawk 3 Pro . It's based on the new PX4 FMU4 Pro standard, which includes a full suite of next-generation sensors and and the more powerful STM32F469 processor. It's designed for the Dronecode/PX4 flight software, which is the current official Pixhawk standard. The board is currently in developer release, but will be taken out of beta after testing is complete in the next month or two. All details are  here  (and below): ------------------ Introduction FMUv4-PRO takes input from all of the Pixhawk stakeholders; end users, developers, researchers and manufacturing partners. Goals for this iteration of the platform are: – An integrated, single-board flight controller for space constrained applications – A modular multi-board flight controller for ...

Re: fast communication between two arduinos #9 Sep 07, 2015, 05:06 pm Thanks guys, At the end I re-Checked the I2C protocol and understood it can only pass Chars ether by array or singles and managed to work with the code from here: http://ift.tt/1DAeWM4 and created my version to pass a 4 digit code and it work quite fast (less than 1ms). // Wire Master Reader int x,y; #include <Wire.h> void setup() {   Wire.begin();        // join i2c bus (address optional for master)   Serial.begin(115200);  // start serial for output } void loop() {   Wire.requestFrom(2, 6);    // request 6 bytes from slave device #2      int a = Wire.read(); // receive a byte as character      int b = Wire.read(); // receive a byte as character      int c = Wire.read(); // receive a byte as character      int d = Wire.read(); // receive a byte as character ...

South Korea’s National Standard on Drones The Korean Agency for Technology & Standards (KATS) of the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy said that it announced the world’s first national standard on drones on December 30. The national standard has the title of KSW9000: Classification & Terms of Unmanned Aircraft Systems. It provides the definition of terms regarding 52 types of drones, such as large unmanned aircraft and remotely controlled drones, along with six categories of classification based on operating altitudes, maximum takeoff weights, kinetic energy, etc. According to the standard, drones can be classified into five categories based on their maximum takeoff weights, ranging from 2 kg or less to more than 600 kg. In addition, those with a dead weight of 150 kg or less are dubbed unmanned powered aerial vehicles, those with a dead weight of more than 150 kg and up to 600 kg are called midsize unmanned aircraft and the others are classified as large u...

So once I'm done doing #flighttest #data #reduction and #analysis I'm tackling the development of having these two @atmelcorporation #atmega328 talking to each other over I2C bus network. #coding #code #uav4africa via Instagram http://ift.tt/2gY9dG1

#samtheman analyzing his #helicopter #toy with such attention. #drones watch out for this guy. #takingover #uav4africa #proudpapa via Instagram http://ift.tt/2g35NTr

We're in lesson 5/100 before inverted flights. Decided to up ante and do min 10 min of flying for every session. Three packs of battery should give me 12min of flight. #uav4africa #drone #rcheli via Instagram http://ift.tt/2eEwDDJ

So decided to upload my coding scripts and share it with the world. I'm not officially in the #opensource business. One actually gets to realize that the only to harness an idea, is to throw it out in the open. #uav4africa #coding #movingup http://ift.tt/2f1HHqB via Instagram http://ift.tt/2equZ8k

So I finally found an enclosure for my automated sprinkling system. It uses a photocell for day/night switch. I'm planning to add two potentiometers to control duration and repetition without flashing new code. A master switch that restarts the program will also help. Will post some videos on how it works. EDIT: Managed to add the master switch on the microcontroller. Given than the solenoid in Normally-Closed, the master switch prevents the current to drawn by the solenoid. #coding #atmega328 #uav4africa via Instagram http://ift.tt/2f1G7or

So I've bumped into the idea last night of using the I2C bus protocol to connect multiple #atmega328 chips to emulate the airframe/environment kinematics and the GPS NMEA messaging in order to complete HILS system. This then means I would be able to be able to perform synchronous serial communication at specified rates as per the real hardware in testing the autopilot controllers and waypoint navigation. #uav4africa via Instagram http://ift.tt/2ek78T9