ArduCopter Hexa with camera mount, by jDrones and Chris Anderson.

Anderson sees a future where robotic aviation is ubiquitous. He created the first DIY kits using the ArduPilot, then founded 3D Robotics, a company making parts, kits, and ready-to-fly UAVs. We asked him what he’s learned.

You’re a DIY robot enthusiast who became a hardware manufacturer and kit maker. Any lessons to share with aspiring kit makers?

Amateur assembly: Chris Anderson's kids.

The biggest lesson is that I should not be creating kits. The DIY Drones community is developing amazing technologies like the ArduPilot. We’ve created a business with several large factories creating kits, and they do it much better than me and my kids.

I’m chair of 3D Robotics, which makes the ArduCopter kit brain, and we work with others who make their own kits. We’ve got more than 120
different SKUs. It’s a multimillion-dollar operation now; some are kits, some are just boards.

What tipped your decision to sell UAV kits, rather than just share designs?

Three or four years ago I built the Blimpduino. I had the idea that you could have an autonomous blimp that would fly around in schools, and it would be great for teaching kids about robotics.

So we designed the board, and we put the Eagle files up, and said here’s a link to SparkFun’s BatchPCB, here’s the parts list to buy from Mouser and Digi-Key, and here are the instructions for putting it all together.

That’s when we realized it was too hard — people just weren’t going to do it. We had to build the board for people.

I made about three boards and said, “I’m never doing that again.” So we got a contract manufacturer, and found out that you really have to order at scale to get pricing. We got the money together to buy 500 boards — you have to make a leap of faith, take some capital risk to get the volume. It was a little scary.

Then we realized that sourcing the other parts is also hard. Regular folks have no experience in it. I spent a ridiculous amount of time learning the economics of mylar balloons. The learning curve is steep and expensive.

Kitting it was the only way to really get it into people’s hands.

What did it take to make that first kit?

An ArduPilot Mega board is born.

Eventually we got all the parts, got the boards built and tested, the firmware loaded, labels printed, and at that point I bribed the children for $1 an hour. We labeled all the parts and set up an assembly line on the dining room table. I was doing quality control, but in the end, despite all our efforts, about half the kits were missing a part. I spent months sending out extra Lego parts or motors to people. I think it’s cute that a 5-year-old forgot to put in a part, but the customer might not be as charmed.

Now we have factories in San Diego, Tijuana, and Bangkok, running professional assembly and packing operations so we can keep the customer happy and actually keep these things in stock.

What lessons did you learn the hard way?

Sourcing parts is expensive. You have to buy wholesale to sell retail, which means buying in volume — in the thousands to get decent pricing — and that’s capital risk, especially if you make a design mistake. You have to make a bet that you’re going to sell a lot of them. You have to explain to your wife or husband why you just put $10,000 on the credit card.

Hand assembly means you’re in the assembly line business, and you’ll spend a lot of time making sure everything gets into the kit.

Often, worse than failing is succeeding. This is not a one-time exercise — if you create 1,000 kits and succeed, you’ve got to do it again! The third time, I had to pay the kids way more than $1 an hour. As a kit maker you may discover that the worst thing that can happen is that these things become popular: “Oh no, we can’t keep them in stock!”

Don’t forget to sell it for a profit.

What would you do differently?

Pro assembly: Arturo in San Diego factory.

If you really want to make a kit that lots of people will enjoy and you’ll continue to sell over the years, it will quickly get too big for the kitchen table. Find a commercial partner that really cares about quality control. It’s a real business involving paid professionals doing quality assurance, answering customer support calls, ensuring that this thing is good and stays in stock. As enticing as it is to create a kit, it quickly becomes unfun if it’s successful.

Also, the tech support on kits is a nightmare. It imposes a huge aftermarket burden: you’ve got to help people fix it, or take back kits.

In this issue, MIT’s Michael Schrage says that kit makers like DIY Drones suggest a robotics future “more varied and ‘out of control’ than anything envisioned inside the Pentagon.”

Do you see amateur UAVs getting out of control? (I’m thinking of the so-called drone terrorist arrested by the FBI.)

First off, there’s no evidence that that guy had GPS or anything other than an R/C plane.

An assembled DIY Drone with parts totaling about $300.

Openness means most people will use it for good, and some will use it for bad, but that’s true of any tool: computers, cellphones, even hammers. There are those who want to ban technology and ban the maker instinct.

So what’s the future of UAVs in the hands of amateurs?

We started with kits, but we’re very quickly moving toward Plug and Play — there’s two orders of magnitude difference in the sizes of those
markets. If you have to put two parts together, you’ve eliminated half your market — and if you have to solder something, you’ve eliminated 99.9 percent of your potential market!

-Keith Hammond

The ArduCopter 3DR Quad Kit with Electronics includes everything to build your own quad UAV, except radio gear and batteries. Directions are easily downloaded, and assembly is relatively painless; just take care to put thread-locker on all screws, and balance the props. A wiki walks you through the Mission Planner software, firmware installation, and calibration of the APM board, sensors, and speed controls.

In autonomous mode, the ArduCopter takes off, follows GPS waypoints, and lands unassisted. In manual mode you fly it by the remote and make it hover (“loiter”) by flipping a switch. The DIY Drones community is there to help and they’ll push you to expand — add video or use a ground control station to wirelessly upload new coordinates — so you’ll never tire of your ArduCopter.

In the water, the sub looks incredible and dives, surfaces, and turns just like the real thing! Great for beginners and advanced hobbyists alike. Expect to finish it in a week or so (although the manual says it can be done in a weekend, which isn’t likely).

The machined aluminum, carbon fiber, and plastic parts ensure a rigid, stable airframe capable of precise 3D aerobatics. The electronics (servos, speed control, brushless motor, and gyro) are perfectly suited to the copter, so most pilots won’t want to upgrade. Simulator training or prior experience is highly recommended before flying.

The vinyl balloon can be decorated with paints or computer-cut graphics, which is perfect for sporting events, trade shows, or just for fun.

Add a few coins for ballast, and you can fly the blimp indoors with precision by using a gentle hand on the controls. In flight it looks amazing, just like a smaller version of the real thing.

RC4WD’s Killer Krawler is one of the biggest such models in the world. At 1/5 scale, it has a fully CNC-machined aluminum chassis, an articulation angle of 90°, nearly 6 inches of center ground clearance, and an over 22-inch wheelbase.

As with all crawlers, this one is four-wheel-drive, with locked differentials. It has two motors, one on each axle, aka MOA (motor on axle). The gears, along with everything else on this beast, are all billet aluminum, so it’ll withstand anything you can throw at it. The 30:1 gear ratio ensures high torque for precise crawling. Two ESCs (electronic speed controllers), two motors, a radio system, servo, and a battery are required to complete this kit.

The giant scale of the chassis kit makes it attractive as a potential robotics platform, able to handle extremely rough terrain and big enough to carry a truckload of sensors and hardware. RC4WD has hundreds of options and parts to choose from — wheels, tires, chassis, shocks, axles, transmissions, and electronics — to help you easily customize a truck of your choice.