R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

At Saturday's Rock River Off-Season (R2OC) we had three drones flying at various times during the event. It was really neat to see them fly over the field and they provided a nice breeze to cool off our field volunteers. The larger drone did a great "demo" (aka showed off) during the lunch break.

We were able to show footage from one of them in the arena during the event. And hoping to sort out how to integrate the video into our webcast next year.

Here are three pretty cool sets of footage taken from a Phantom Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). No sound with these, but still fun to watch. Thanks to Nesher for posting to YouTube for us to share.

R2OC Finals Match 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CLrsqhPxZI

R2OC QF Match 1-2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCDUrJ4M6pk

R2OC Highlights (15 minutes of various footage) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8RKmwlBFAI

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

Thanks for this. This is really cool to show to people who want to know what it was like and just a general competition is like.

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

Please tell us more about the drone! How did you obtain it? Who flew it? Did it require modifications to be able to film the event?

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

Drones are usually harder to fly indoors, giving the lack of gps (or very hard to connect to gps)

My 3dr iris quadcopter doesn't like to be flown indoors. The phantom 2 is easier to fly than the 3d robotics controller

I wouldn't trust my quadrotor over a crowd of people, especially indoors!::ouch::

But anyways, nice video. You should add a gimbal to smooth that out, they work really nicely

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

One of our mentors is an enthusiast - the footage is from his rig (probably the wrong word for it). One of the participating teams is sponsored by a UAS company and they brought a small quad copter plus a massive UAS as well. The large one was pretty amazing and did a great lunch time demo when the field was clear.

We got clearance from the facility before setting this up and made sure we had an area cordoned off for the drone pilots. We did not fly over the crowd - stayed for the most part over the back side of the field and around the edges.

They really are cool and the footage gives a whole new perspective.

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

You should be able to fly fine without GPS... the only thing GPS adds is position lock. I rarely fly with GPS only when I need to stay in one spot for video...

There are safety issues with doing this. (flying indoors)... big safety issues. But that's up to the staff.

*EDIT: What's wrong with a camera on a stick/ladder?

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

I am not *that* experienced with my quad yet. I can fly in stability mode, but it is significantly harder and I don't have a whole bunch of practices with it. But, yes, I could fly it without GPS, I just don't like to

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

Hi, I'm the non-professional/hobbyist who flew the Phantom 2 Vision and posted the three videos on YouTube.

A few thoughts/responses:
1) The first priority, overriding all else, was safety.
2) The second priority was not to interfere in any way with match play.
3) The third priority was to recognize that the appearance of a "drone" at a FRC event was only intended to be a novelty/additional bit of fun, and that the competition was the key, and the UAS just a peripheral thought.

Early on, the decision was made to try to have a UAS at the event. I worked for a few weeks with the Audio/Visual people, but due to an unforeseen limitation of their system (only one good composite port available, and no HDMI input available) we could not hook up a live video feed to the main screens, just to one screen in a corner.

I was able to walk through the venue a few days before the event and scope things out, and in addition I was able to see the floor plan layout down to each individual table/pit, and mentally map out what I wanted to do.

Rule # 1: No flying over the audience. EVER.
Rule # 2: Got OK from as many volunteers/field crew as I could corral to fly over the scorers table. (It was kind of hot at the venue, so a few of them asked me to fly over them to get the breeze :) )
Rule # 3: No flying over the field during match play; OK to fly in between matches, only if drive teams were not on the field (e.g. immediately at the end of a match, before the green lights go on and the gates open)
Rule # 4: Organizing committee members and any volunteer I could talk to were told to bring any complaints/concerns to me, and I would stop flying immediately if there was a real problem (see below)

One person expressed a generalized concern about having UAS's flying in the building, specifically about the large dodecacopter from Mad Labs. Once he found out Mad Labs qualifications, he was OK.

In order to avoid an even longer post, I'll stop for the moment and post some more thoughts in a bit.

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

OK, some more thoughts/info:

If anyone at R2OC has any complaints or suggestions regarding the use of the UAS's, please post them here or PM me. I either want this to be really good, or we shouldn't do it at all.

The big quadcopter, and the really big octacopter at the R2OC, were from Mad Labs Industries in North Aurora, IL. http://madlabindustries.com Matt makes some very cool stuff, and they are huge supporters of the IMSA FRC team. I talked to them before the event, and they agreed with our restrictions. The big copter can lift a payload of 35-50 pounds. It is drool-worthy.

I have a Taco-RC 2-axis gimbal, but it decided to spazz out the morning of the event, so I had to take it off and go with the stock 1-axis gimbal.

BTW, I flew with prop guards on the whole time. The limiting factor in terms of batteries was not the copter or the controller, I had plenty of spares for those; my phone, however, died just before Finals Match 2 despite plugging it in to a charger around the beginning of semi-finals. (The video stream on a Phantom goes through a phone/tablet)

A camera on a ladder or stick (or long tripod duct taped to a railing, been there/done that) works very well indeed. But the UAS can get much higher than these can go on a practical basis. In addition, the UAS added some interest for the audience, and got a few students interested in yet another high-tech field.

I could not get a GPS signal in the building, although the Mad Labs people could! The problem with no GPS for me was that the UAS constantly drifted one way or another, requiring constant control feedback and hence constant motion on the video. I have some thoughts on this for the next time.

The lack of sound I feel really detracts from the videos, more than I had anticipated. Next time, I will record sound one way or another, and dub it in to the video. The other problem with lack of sound? Nearly impossible to identify the match number of each video. So I will film a few seconds of the match number written on an index card before each flight next time.

Finally, on one video I continued flying until the score was posted, and got a view of the screen for that. That was nice, but as we know sometimes it takes several minutes for a score to post.

So far, no complaints from anyone. There were no crashes//unintended contact with objects.

Don Miller is the guy to contact if you have questions about drones. We are currently editing our footage, and will post footage soon!

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

I personally love it! I know several people that fly quad copters like that and other things. I love the fish eye lens you were using(correct me if I am wrong).If you could livestream an event like that it would be amazing! Personally that was the best view of a field I have seen this year!

Re: R2OC Drone Footage - Above the Field Action
 

Thanks, yes, a 170 degree lens.
The problem with livestreaming was that our A/V folks didn't have a video board that had enough ports to capture HDMI or composite. We hope to remedy that for next year.
We are trying to figure out how to have a boom, about 35 feet or so, extending out from the "press box" at our venue to over the field. This would also mean extending out over the audience, so we can't just duct tape some PVC pipe or anything - has to be done right, or not done at all.