Sprite Drone/UAV system

[907rider]

A company called "Sprite" is currently on kickstarter trying to raise funds for a drone system.  Check out their video of the working prototypes.

 

 

The system honestly has some pretty neat some specs:

 

Standalone mode: create a route for the drone to fly on its own

Standard fly it yourself mode

Follow me mode

Up to 4 mile range

First person view mode

2 axis stabilized gimbal

waterproof

rugged, made to be tossed in a backpack and banged around

 

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ascentaerosystems/sprite-the-portable-rugged-totally-different-small/description

[Cactu]

Looks kinda similar to that lily drone

All around though kickstarters I am very weary with

[Mitrailleuse]

12 min flight time....

i won't even consider buying a drone untill there is a significant upgrade in the battery life...

pl0x invent magic battery tech,scientists.

[ICantThinkOfAnyGoodName]

Incoming lawsuit from Coca Cola.

[ofr057]

I like the look of this, its a good backpack drone.

 

I would agree the fly time is abit low but yeah looks good, especially since its being designed for more then just a gopro. I could see this being good with a hyperspectral sensor or a flir.

 

It looks more of a drone for NRM not for making pretty pictures

[907rider]

 

 

I would agree the fly time is abit low but yeah looks good, especially since its being designed for more then just a gopro. I could see this being good with a hyperspectral sensor or a flir.

 

 

 

12 min flight time....

i won't even consider buying a drone untill there is a significant upgrade in the battery life...

pl0x invent magic battery tech,scientists.

 

 

Definitely agree with both of you, battery life needs to be longer, hopefully if it go's into production they will have something that gives it more than just 12min of battery life.  It does look like it uses a fairly standard li-po battery so maybe you could fit a bit larger one in? orr if they go to a non "off the shelf" battery one that was custom molded for the drone it could be made larger and give it longer battery life.

[ofr057]

Definitely agree with both of you, battery life needs to be longer, hopefully if it go's into production they will have something that gives it more than just 12min of battery life.  It does look like it uses a fairly standard li-po battery so maybe you could fit a bit larger one in? orr if they go to a non "off the shelf" battery one that was custom molded for the drone it could be made larger and give it longer battery life.

one thing what I'm not sure is in the kick starter comments they say there just using off the shelf .... with drones being shipped in December :blink:

 

I see this good and bad - there not really breaking any ground.

 

 

Thanks for your interest and support! About our delivery schedule...we've been watching a lot of drone projects here on Kickstarter over the last year or two, and a lot of them have faced delivery challenges that have stemmed from efforts to include many different layers of new technology at the same time. We're really in a very different position. To avoid that trap and significantly decrease the technical risks of bringing Sprite to market, we very carefully have decided to use as many proven, commercially available components as possible. The flight controller and autopilot is one of them. We settled on the most current APM system available, which has evolved over several years and earned its place among the most reliable and powerful platforms. It is trusted by thousands of pilots around the world, and has amassed tens of thousands of flight hours on countless missions. Sprite supports all of the features it provides, including waypoint navigation and all of the other autonomous flight modes, and the only development that has been necessary has been to get the stabilization logic to work with Sprite. As you can see, that's been done, and there are only a few final elements that need to be optimized. The rest of the components, including speed controllers, motors, telemetry, are all commercial-off-the-shelf. That means they're well proven, and we can devote our time where it needs to be at this point, which is optimizing design elements and transitioning from development to production. We will undoubtedly face unforeseen challenges, but we've got great support from a team of high;y experienced experts and we're confident we can work through them. Thanks again for your interest, and we accept the challenge! We hope to see you on the list of people waiting to get their Sprite...in December of 2015!