Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, will visit the Championship to make a presentation on his DIY unmanned aerial vehicle projects (
Chris' DIY Drones Site). The presentation venue will be in the GWCC on THUR at 3:00-3:45 PM, followed by a chance to ask questions about the project. This presentation will not be part of the Robotics Conference, and there is no charge to attend.
Video of Chris' drone platforms offers some insight into this presentation.(
Chris talking about his Blimp Project)
The purpose of the Championship presentation is to solicit interest and insight from universities that might be interested in a university based aerial vehicle competition as a possible component of the 2011 FIRST Championship. In addition to talking about blimps, Chris will demo some other drones that attendees should find interesting.
Chris would like to solicit feedback on the idea of a university based aerial vehicle competition following his presentation. While all university representatives are invited to the presentation, the topic should be one that many others may be interested in as well, and especially so for FRC grads that wish to participate in such a competition while in college.
Some folks may recall that Chris visited the Championship two years ago to demonstrate his LEGO drone, and at the time asked Dean for some help exploring blimp based competitions using BlimpDuino, a very low cost open source autonomous blimp. BlimpDuino is an Arduino-based blimp controller board with on-board infrared and ultrasonic sensors and an interface for an optional RC mode, a simple gondola with two vectoring (tilting) differential thrusters, and ground-based infrared beacon. The history of the project is detailed at the project sponsor’s web site (
BlimpDuino Project). We had a team from Embry Riddle attend the Championship last year to fly one of Chris' blimps around the dome as a proof of flying concept.
If anyone is interested in learning more, please contact me (vincent.wilczynski AT uscga.edu, or via PM, or via this thread) for more information.