Hi all, and thanks for reading about OpenRelief. We are now in a six-month cycle of testing and improving the robot plane and related sensors, and aim to have a durable set of solutions published as schematics and code by December. The idea is to allow anyone, anywhere to make OpenRelief solutions using readily available technology.

I thought it might be useful to share a little more information with you via this page. With that in mind please find some overview information below.

A video overview of OpenRelief and the robot plane:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZROTYm17_Uc

An interview with a deep-dive into why OpenRelief was established and where it is going:
http://www.designspark.com/content/openrelief-clearing-fog-disaster

A copy of the slides we just presented at LinuxCon Japan to launch the project (warning: PDF):
https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp2012_coughlan.pdf

Regards

Shane
Co-Founder, OpenRelief

Using the robot plane for this type of thing should be relatively trivial. You would probably have to train the camera a little to improve fidelity of recognizing dirt roads, but especially after integration with OpenStreetMap, the basic functionality fits right what this OpenRelief technology can do.

Adding additional functionality to the basic robot plane is intended to be trivial. What might be useful is to think of this as a platform with some basic features, and the flexibility to be customized for specific use cases.

Naturally we are very glad to work with and support these types of organizations. Put simply, helping with disaster relief is our objective. We want to refine our robot plane and sensors to ensure that relief workers can fill in their knowledge gaps more quickly and effectively than before.

It's a good question. OpenRelief is designing and testing technology to create a really good airframe solution with broad capabilities. It will be pretty cheap for anyone to source components at retail for around 1,000 USD and build their own unit. If a company decides to start production, it can set up a channel and build the technology at a much lower price due to supply chain savings. We are happy to have both types of stakeholder in our community.

While OpenRelief is focused on disaster relief, you can also use the robot plane platform for other things. As one other poster mentioned, it can work for scouting roads ahead for sports or similar, and it can make a great test-bed for your own UAV development.

First of all, OpenRelief is a design project where people donate their time, experience and money to help create open disaster relief solutions, and we make our designs available to everyone for free. We do this to try and solve serious problems with gathering information in disaster situations. The reasons vary between the project contributors, but they are all pretty clear cut. For example, I was involved in the Japanese disaster relief effort last year, and the problems encountered there directly motivated me to work with Karl Lattimer to create OpenRelief.

Second of all, the 1,000 USD cost refers to the expected cost to source and build the drones around the world. In other words, it is the target Bill of Materials for retail purchasing of the various technologies needed to assemble the drone. For obvious reasons that does not involve taking a "100 RC plane, sticking about 150$ worth of hardware in it" and hoping for the best. Perhaps it would be informative to take a moment and price the retail Ardupilot with airspeed sensor from Udrones, which is currently 324.95 USD plus shipping. The OpenRelief plane also requires good optics, good servos, motor, battery and a computer. As another commentator said, this is about balancing cost and reliability, with the requirement that this equipment can be built or shipped anywhere in the world and provide utility for a reasonable time.

While it is easy to make vague comments based on opinion, there is a significant gap between that and actually building, testing and refining a solutions with a specific use-case in mind. To avoid waste, it would be more useful if energy instead went towards increasing functionality and lowers costs in projects like OpenRelief, so that better solutions can be created and shared with others.

The thing that really bites about the article, and the reason I disagree with it, is attitude. The open source world (by and large) is about sharing intellectual horsepower. We make something, we share it. Some guy can make it better. We can all get the added value of development. Coherent groups create open source software products (yes, I said products) like Firefox or OpenOffice, and individuals go and toy with the code.

The Microsoft presentation says something very different.

"Matusow said opening up software can add value, "but you need to understand why you want to open certain software. We are building intellectual property into software and trying to sell it. We throw code over the wall for the community to build on it.""

They throw code over the wall?

It's very patronizing. Instead of regarding the people out there as brainpower with a positive contribution, they regard their internal direction as higher than external voices. I guess this is why ultimately Microsoft is dropping the ball. They just don't listen. You NEED to listen. The world has changed since Win95, or even WinXP. We need more, we need it faster, and we need it to work with the Mac laptop and Linux server.

Basically, the surge in open source is driven by the fact that it's answering so many of the productivity, communication and search questions of the marketplace. Even Apple realize that, and this is why their baby (MacOS X) is largely available as Darwin (open OS code).

Just my two cents.

Shane Coughlan
Project Leader
Mobility http://mobility.shaneland.co.uk/