Commercial autopilot projects?

[Kaptah]

There seems to be quite a lot of auto pilot HW/SW projects here, PIC, AVR, ARM7 and so on. I wonder, how many of you who are building such systems, are aiming for selling an actual board for the UAV community? Or does everyone have that "dream"? HW + open source seems to be discussed often, perhaps due to the lack of SW resources for this demanding project.

[macboffin]

I don't fully understand your query ; when you say "selling to the UAV community" do you mean professional users ie industry/military, or amateur users/experimenters? I should think that any one looking to market an autopilot is NOT going to publish anything because of commercial security, and any amateur products are unlikely to be sufficiently sophisticated for much market capture."Serious" autopilots are a lot more than merely an autostabiliser connected to GPS and other sensors, they are virtually autonomous mission-programmed devices and costly, not only for the hardware and software but also in view of the developemental and testing expenses, preparation of manuals etc and advertising.

[zik]

Yes, I'm developing an autopilot which I plan to release as open source and open hardware. But I'm also planning to make the hardware available built-up to the UAV community if people want it. There's still a lot of work to do though - it'll be a few more months at least before it's ready to go. I'm currently at the stage of sending the first prototype board off for fabrication.

[mwhazard]

One possibly viable commercial open source autopilot model would give away the hardware design and software for free, and make money on a support package. RedHat has done the same thing for Linux, for example. Of course it would be necessary to demonstrate that you offer useful services. In this case, the author of the autopilot code has a better chance of selling a support package than the average reseller.

Matt

[sergey123]

Agree with mwhazard
Open-source projects can generate a huge revenue usually on additional service/help.

Good luck zik !!!