it's the guy that makes recording. not sure if i read about drones that lock on jammers in his "blog" or different one (too much reading on topic of war in Ukraine, unfortunately).
https://darkhive.ai small uncrewed aerial systems for public safety. Other companies still dominate the market and for good reason. We aim to bring US-made equipment that is competitive and affordable.
This is very cool! Is the intent that it'll have a bunch of modular stuff so law enforcement can equip it to do different tasks (e.g., different cameras or sensors)? Not sure if you ever saw the Axon (Taser) announcement that was quickly halted but they pitched doing something like this for schools with a taser attached. A bit dystopian but maybe useful given the awful number of school shootings and poor response times as evidenced by Uvalde
The smaller unit we are building will have some different payload configs. We aren’t going for glass breakers and such based on feedback and what is most popular on the market (DJI). We want these to help mitigate the dangerous environments in public safety and be disposable. Like a frisbee. Shoot me an email! Happy to chat more.
Let me know if you need someone to test in a high heat environment and give you product feedback.
I am on the UAS committee for a large city (1.6m+ people with 13k+ employees) and its amazing how many us-based companies don't take into account how hot it can be in the desert. I recently saw a vendor who needed to redesign/change their batteries and motors because of it.
As some unsolicited advice, if you aren't working to get on the DIU Blue list [1], I highly recommend it. Many if not most public safety agencies are using that to make purchasing decisions.
I have been sounding the alarm on how DJI is likely going to get banned at some point with all the trade shenanigans going on, but many of the US based companies just aren't as operator friendly.
I did this for about 2 years across the United States. If you’re employed, make sure your manager is supportive/already remote friendly.
Get good internet. I found Verizon to be the best for cellular and this was before Starlink Mobile was available. Get a directional cellular antenna and mount (not a repeater/amplifier) and learn how to point the antenna at towers if you plan to do any “boondocking” out in the west of the US. Otherwise, everywhere else these days likely has internet.
Compost Toilet is a win in my book. Very little maintenance and no nasty tanks to deal with. But, it’s not for everyone.
Decide if you need showers in your wheeled home or not. That drives the cost of your rig significantly. Most RVs are absolute trash for quality south of $50k.
There was a guy on Reddit recently complaining about how hard it was to keep up with orders for his teardrop trailers. A bunch of people told him he wasn’t charging enough and should raise his prices and use the money to hire someone and also to look for better deals from suppliers (eg, larger orders less frequently).
My parents (now ~70yo) ordered an expensive offroad trailer/caravan around the time COVID hit. The regular build time plus delays will put it at almost three years from order to delivery. For people who are not exactly getting more agile each year! I feel for them. They have very limited recourse against the delays also.
I nearly felt allergic while reading about the endless quality control issues. Piecework only "works" when people easily can and do verify the product delivered. A combination of customers and shareholders are getting boned by workers, their managers, and the dealerships here. Incentives matter.
There’s this notion with many of these solutions that we could rent a few hours from Yellowstone, the parents could get up at the crack of dawn and drive while the kids sleep. Wake up kids, that’s Yellowstone up ahead! But most of these contraptions specifically warn against operating them while occupied. They aren’t built for accidents.
Community has an episode at the end where they trash a camper. It seemed comedy driven at first but the longer I looked at it and campers the more plausible that scene seemed. It’s foam and plywood.
Edit: I finally clicked through the autopian link from up thread and it’s reminding me there’s a guy I watch sometimes who does conversion vans. All of his stuff is built around those extruded aluminum rails. He hasn’t figured out how to make use of those last few cubic feet yet but he seems to do a good job and they’re fairly sturdy. Last I watched he was perfecting his showers.
I now wonder what it would look like if he converted buses instead of shop vans. You have a superstructure that might actually survive a hit, they’re already set up for AC units, you “just” need to build repeatable interiors. But you need much more shop space, time, and capital to do something of that sort.
There, edited it for you for accuracy. :-) Seriously, our Thor retailed for $100K in 2018, and I've been through that entire vehicle while installing solar/inverter/battery. As I've told my spouse, "there isn't a straight screw in that whole interior". I've probably pulled a bathroom garbage container worth of crap out of the walls (leftover trimmings and the like). Yeah, didn't think anyone would look in there, eh? :-)
"South" to mean down or below, and likewise for north, drives me up a wall. If you are standing at the south pole, north is down. There's also no concept of up/down in space, and so northern hemisphere normalcy is false. To Australians, North America is below!
On a conventionally oriented map, south is always down, and north is always up. "Down south" and "up north" are also very common phrases when discussing relative geographical locations, due to the same reason.
And if you turn around, left and right change places... woah.
Snide comment aside, it's obviously in reference to standard map orientation. Maps had to be oriented somehow, unless you're advocating for the chaos of arbitrary individual map orientations.
I'm Australian and don't know anyone here who wouldn't consider North America "above". Can't imagine having the time to be that pedantic. Using "north of $50k" to describe something more expensive than $50k is very standard here too.
I am most intrigued by the use of the 6x Sony IMX418 which seems to be brilliant for daisy-chaining cameras over MIPI lines in such a small package even if the sensor is older. Anyone else have experience with these?
Darkhive.com | United States | REMOTE | Full-time | $120-200k + early shares, employee #5-10
Public safety and military robotics systems are unintegrated with existing equipment and applications. They require too much specialized training on, making them incredibly niche and significantly inhibiting broad adoption.
Darkhive is creating an autonomy software stack that will enable military and public safety users to intuitively interact with robotics platforms in order to more rapidly understand their common environment and make decisions together when it matters most. In addition to our core software suite, Darkhive is creating a palm-sized, autonomous drone optimized to demonstrate the capabilities of our software stack. The integrated software and hardware solution are key to realizing the full potential of the product in our target markets.
We're looking for early hires to build out our SLAM stack and plumbing to pilot the drones. Our robots are designed and built in the USA. Let's make drones more affordable and accessible to public safety, humanitarian, and defense applications.
- Position can be 100% remote (US Only).
- We do in person meetings when needed. Still a very small team!
- We're a startup, but we have funding and contracts. We're all mid-career so we want a sustainable, mature, diverse working environment.
- This position will involve defense work. However, we will never build drones that can harm people.
Darkhive.com | United States | REMOTE | Full-time | $120-200k + early shares, employee #5-10
Public safety and military robotics systems are unintegrated with existing equipment and applications. They require too much specialized training on, making them incredibly niche and significantly inhibiting broad adoption.
Darkhive is creating an autonomy software stack that will enable military and public safety users to intuitively interact with robotics platforms in order to more rapidly understand their common environment and make decisions together when it matters most. In addition to our core software suite, Darkhive is creating a palm-sized, autonomous drone optimized to demonstrate the capabilities of our software stack. The integrated software and hardware solution are key to realizing the full potential of the product in our target markets.
We're looking for early hires to build out our SLAM stack and plumbing to pilot the drones. Our robots are designed and built in the USA. Let's make drones more affordable and accessible to public safety, humanitarian, and defense applications.
- Position can be 100% remote (US Only).
- We do in person meetings when needed. Still a very small team!
- We're a startup, but we have funding and contracts. We're all mid-career so we want a sustainable, mature, diverse working environment.
- This position will involve defense work. However, we will never build drones that can harm people.
Public safety and military robotics systems are unintegrated with existing equipment and applications. They require too much specialized training on, making them incredibly niche and significantly inhibiting broad adoption.
Darkhive is creating an autonomy software stack that will enable military and public safety users to intuitively interact with robotics platforms in order to more rapidly understand their common environment and make decisions together when it matters most. In addition to our core software suite, Darkhive is creating a palm-sized, autonomous drone optimized to demonstrate the capabilities of our software stack. The integrated software and hardware solution are key to realizing the full potential of the product in our target markets.
We're looking for an early hire to build out our SLAM stack. Our robots are designed and built in the USA. Let's make drones more affordable and accessible to public safety, humanitarian, and defense applications.
- Position can be 100% remote (US Only).
- We do in person meetings for fun/coordination when needed. Still a very small team!
- We're a startup, but we have funding and contracts. We're all mid-career so we want a sustainable, mature, diverse working environment.
- This position will involve defense work. However, we will never build drones that can harm people.
@danbr -- this is random but saw you are a perception engineer. I'm looking for someone that I think has your experience. Not doing space stuff. If interested, hit me up through profile.
Great breakdown… with some interesting results and a ton of effort.
Are there any open benchmarks like this for all models that are actually runnable like the data exposed in https://github.com/syhw/wer_are_we but with some of your additional metrics?
