Brad Feld

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Rookie Drone Crash

Dec 20, 2013
Category Investments

I’m fascinated with drones. I’ve never been a model airplane guy and my model rocket phase lasted about a month when I was 10. But drones feel like something different, since I can program them to do what I want them to go do, rather than have to control them with a controller. My current goal is to program a Taco Drone to go from the 2nd floor balcony outside of my office to T/ACO, hover for a few minutes while they attach lunch to it, and return to my balcony.

We recently invested in 3D Robotics so I went online and bought a 3DR Iris quadcopter. We got an early version a month or so ago and some of the gang in my office – especially Dane, Nick, and Eugene – have been flying it around. Dane appears to have mastered it since his instructions to me included stuff like “don’t press that button” and “don’t move that lever.”

Yesterday he brought the Iris up to my place in Keystone for me to play around with. It was at the end of a longer meeting on another project we are working on. I wanted to just program the drone to do stuff, but Dane insisted that I learn how to fly it manually first. So I did.

The results were predictable – a tree jumped out and got in the way.

In comparison, here’s how it’s supposed to work. Now if someone would finish up that jetpack I’ve been waiting for.