The company plans to use the funding to expand their software and hardware products and intends to work with Qualcomm to further utilize that company’s Snapdragon processors, a platform designed for use with tablets and smartphones.

Qualcomm’s next-generation Snapdragon processors, including sensors, wireless and computer vision, are considered to be ideal for developing advanced applications and driving increased performance for 3DR drones.

“By working with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., we can bring advanced computing to the skies at an increasing pace,” said Chris Anderson, CEO of 3DR. “Such multi-gigahertz Linux-based onboard computing platforms, combined with state-of-the-art cameras and other sensors and wireless technologies, will allow us to create next-gen drones that are smarter, easier and safer than ever before.”

The recent FAA-suggested regulations of the airspace, and the opening up of that space to commercial ventures, will expand 3DRs role in that emerging set of industries. With Qualcomm as a significant investor, 3DR becomes privy to smartphone technology and sensors that can help 3DR speed up research and development for the drone world.

3D Robotics acquired Sifteo, the start-up which developed Sifteo Cubes and their associated game applications, for an undisclosed amount. Sifteo will help 3D Robotics expand their electronics capabilities for their UAV products as 3D Robotics continues to grow. Sifteo will also continue to provide support for their Sifteo Cubes clients.

3D Robotics and their DIY Drones community for personal UAVs, has been growing by leaps and bounds. 3D Robotics has a line of products which includes multicopters, planes and autopilot software.

True Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based VC firm that invests in early-stage tech startups, is an investor in both 3D Robotics and Sifteo (as well as 96 other companies) and arranged the acquisition.

Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics said in a press release, “When we first engaged with the Sifteo team and saw their skillset, experience and IP portfolio, we immediately recognized the impact they would have working with us to transform and grow the consumer drone market. Their consumer electronics experience and deep product skills complement our technology perfectly. We are thrilled to have the resources of both groups together to lead what we believe will be a billion-dollar market over the next few years.”

In particular, Anderson promoted one idea that deserves the attention of the drone industry: that by operating in a legal “grey area” (read: deliberately violating regulations that are perceived as unreasonable and unenforceable) drone enthusiasts will force regulatory movement, and this is a good thing. Anderson gave two examples of circumstances that challenge current regulations: Lego Mindstorms being classified by regulators as a cruise missile guidance system (and hence violating export controls), and flying drones in contravention to the FAA regulations governing the use of unmanned aircraft.

Technologists in general (and Silicon Valley in particular) take a dim view of regulations promulgated under the old order (e.g. Lyft, Uber, AirBnB), and it’s true that some aspects of the FAA regulations are out-of-date and no longer reasonable. But while I’m not completely outraged when technologists upend the status quo to make something new (and improved), this attitude works better in industries that don’t involve fast-flying heavy objects.

Let’s remember that the FAA’s primary goal is to keep people from getting killed by aircraft. When it comes to aircraft regulation – manned or unmanned – people on the ground are the main beneficiaries. We are not talking about regulating a relatively low-risk activity (like renting your room out with AirBnB); we are talking about regulating heavy objects hurtling over the heads of people who haven’t consented to be part of the experiment.

Our society rightly asks the government to ensure that activities that impose risk on others — especially those who did not consent — be minimized. We need to update our regulations, but aircraft operators need to respect the letter and spirit of the law as it stands.  What standards do we have if not the law? If we follow the path of breaking all the rules, someone is going to accidentally kill a sympathetic bystander. Beyond the personal tragedy this will create, such an accident will set back our industry and the benefits we can provide to society by a decade.

In Afghanistan, one of my planes almost smacked into a helicopter, but it was the helicopter – not the drone –  that had come, without clearance or radio calls, into an active artillery firing ROZ (restricted operating zone: this is an airspace control measure that makes sure that aircraft don’t run into artillery fire).  Similarly, the first full-sized drone and manned aircraft collision involved a C-130 violating airspace control measures around an airfield.

Pilots are not infallible and often break the rules. The best drone operators have a different safety culture: one where there is proper approval for everything, because every move will be recorded and second guessed. Military drone safety culture is a great example of this approach. I hope this culture will permeate the civilian unmanned aircraft community as well.

Although breaking the rules might move us toward our unmanned enabled future a little bit faster, this is an incredibly dangerous path for our industry and our bystanders.  The closing thought of VLAB Drones was that unmanned aircraft will eventually make the airspace safer for all users.  The panel wondered if this was hyperbole, but it is inevitable when drones have a strong safety culture. Conversely, as long as we are the irresponsible jerks of the air, safety conscious regulators like the FAA will be unsupportive of us flying.  When we, as a civilian unmanned aircraft industry, can be counted on as strong safety partner, and when people in general and commercial aviation are learning safety lessons from us, there will be no more foot dragging. We will get our airspace and the drone revolution will finally be here.

In the meantime: seriously, don’t do anything that could kill anyone, please. Especially if it is illegal. You will ruin it for the rest of us.

“Moore’s Law has never moved faster than is moving inside the phone you’ve already got in your pocket. The pace of development and the price performance curve is moving faster in smartphones than it’s ever moved in history and we’re taking advantage by drafting off this momentum and by employing military-grade technologies at toy prices,” said Chris Anderson at last weekend’s Engadget Expand event at Fort Mason, San Francisco.

The military has deployed 7,500 aerial drones; Chris Anderson’s company, DIY Drones, has got 40,000. Every sort of copter and plane, as shown on the diagram below, is included in the universal autopilot chipset that DIY Drones sells (for $129). And this chip also includes features like geofencing, follow me, and fly by wire.

Anderson’s fast-paced presentation is well worth watching particularly when he discusses how drones can be used for precision agriculture right now, today:

Chris was just part of a really interesting 3-person panel where the other two presenters were Marc Raibert from Boston Dynamics and Steven Cousins from Willow Garage. Marc Raibert is CEO of Boston Dynamics (of Big Dog and Cheeta fame) and described how and why Boston Dynamics builds robots designed to work in rough terrain. He emphasized what Chris said earlier, that military grade technology was moving to the robotics industry at toy prices subsidized by DARPA and smartphone buyers.

Amongst other interesting things Cousins discussed, he also answered the question about what is going to happen at Willow Garage now that the funding has stopped.

Chris Anderson, of DIYDrones, notes in his blog that he has, upon invitation from the editors, submitted an article for the February 11th issue of Time Magazine, which will focus on drones, civilian as well as military. The feature article for this issue, by Lev Grossman, is already online, as is Chris Anderson’s piece, which he has also posted on his blog.

The two conversations that are eating up headline space lately are the continuing discussion over “killer robots,” which almost always refer to autonomous combat drones, and President Obama’s new CIA nominee, John Brennan, who has become the face of the secret-but-not-so-secret combat drone program. On the peripheral, there is some discussion over drones being used for spying purposes and the privacy concerns that arise from that.

Unfortunately, that’s what you mainly hear about “drones” in the media. What you rarely hear about are non-military projects that could have a day-to-day impact on you or a positive effect on our knowledge and humanity in general. Chris Anderson over at diydrones.com has made such a list. Some of the ones that claimed a good amount of my research/interest time:

Drones being used to monitor ocean wildlife.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is conducting a demonstration off Oahu’s North Shore this week of a small unmanned aircraft the agency hopes will improve ocean monitoring and aid environmental research in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The Puma AE, which has a 10-foot wingspan and weighs 13 pounds, can stay aloft for two hours and capture high-definition still photos and video. It is remotely operated.

[…]

It was designed to be quiet and avoid detection, which will allow researchers to observe wildlife at close range, Jacobs said.

“We don’t have to risk personnel being landed on the beaches,” he said. “Exotic species introduction potential gets eliminated and we believe it’ll be less potential for any disturbance of the critters that are being surveyed.”

Drones being used to track hurricanes.

“We are still a long ways away from replacing manned flights,” he said. Instead, the UAVs will supplement manned flights by flying at altitudes of up to 60,000 feet, thousands of feet above the thrashing winds and rain. One aircraft is designed to gather data about the environment around a storm, while the other UAV will study the storm itself.

It’s not the first time NASA has turned to spy aircraft for weather research. Since the 1970s, the space agency has used a version of the military’s U-2 aircraft to conduct a range of observations on everything from wildfires to migratory birds, as well as hurricanes. (During the 1960s, NASA unsuccessfully tried to help cover up Francis Gary Powers’s failed U-2 spy mission in the Soviet Union by claiming he got lost while conducting weather research.)

Like the military, NASA and NOAA are now looking to unmanned vehicles to either replace or bolster more traditional vehicles.

Make your own Google maps or we may be close to getting sky-high WiFi that could help quickly get communication lines setup in disaster zones. So on and so forth.

I’m not certain how the media picks up and comes to use certain terms, or whether it is media that influences our usage and abbreviations. It does seem to me though, from time-to-time, the abbreviation of some terms, like “combat drones” to simply “drones” does a disservice to an emerging technology that does need to be discussed in-whole rather than condemned or mulled over in-part.

Let’s talk about the ethical and moral issues of using combat drones in war, and how they figure into the greater context of war itself. Let’s also talk about the potential for unarmed drones to further tornado research, or the drones being used to rescue people. We could even bring up repurposing combat drones to deliver food to people, instead of bullets and bombs.

We can find good stories and still be accurate in how we use terms and perceive technology. That’s all I’m sayin’.

Let us know what you think in the comment section below. Otherwise, our Twitter is @RobotCentral, or you can check out our Facebook page here.

Read more from our Startup Series.

… Anderson has held the editor-in-chief position for 11 years during which time, in addition to his work at Wired, he authored three books and founded DIY Drones and co-founded 3D Robotics. He also grew Wired’s circulation and won eight magazine awards. In 2010, Adweek named Wired its magazine of the decade.

… Now he is leaving Wired to pursue an entrepreneurial dream by becoming CEO of 3D Robotics, the manufacturing arm for DIY Drones’ UAV product line and store.
… DIY Drones is a 30,600 strong member group focused on amateur UAVs, contests, sharing and the fun of building and flying.

UPDATE 11/5: 3D Robotics gets $5 million in VC funding from True Ventures, O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures and Chris Michel. With the funding and a new sales, marketing and community development office in the Bay Area, 3D robotics will accelerate growth and expand into new markets. 3D Robotics already employs 40 people in their R&D facility in San Diego and factory in Tijuana, Mexico.

This reminds me of a guest post “The Five Secret Laws of Startups” by Fake Grimlock on Extreme Startups. Fake Grimlock  is an extremely smart giant robot dinosaur currently terrorizing the startup community. If you haven’t been eaten, then the First law is “Be Shoes”, which intersects with the Third law, “Build things people want” in a very relevant way for robotics. And for those too impatient to go to Extreme Startups right away, the other secret laws of startups were; be awesome at one thing, fight for the user and be contagious. [image below by Fake Grimlock]

“Be shoes” means that crazy new technology is just not useful and “build things people want” is about validating your assumptions in the marketplace, not just building a crazy knee sled because you want one. There’s a lot of amazing knee sled building in the robotics world. That’s not a bad thing for research. But if you want to build a successful robot startup, then amazing knee sleds have got a very very small market. It might change the world one day but only research labs and very early adopters are interested right now. And they are likely to be building their own.

To “be shoes” as a robot startup, you can use lean startup methodology to find out what robot shoes would look like, before investing everything in production. One of these weird shoes was built by a company who knew their market segment very well.

Robots might be new but people haven’t changed much. A successful robot startup is unlikely to be a solo endeavor. Lean startups can benefit from a team approach, to question assumptions and give scope for rapid prototyping, customer development and deep domain knowledge. Eric Ries describes a lean startups as being born out of;

• the use of open source software and free platforms
• agile development methodology
• rapid customer-centric iteration

Successful startups are rarely new products in new markets. Robot shoes improve an existing product. Successful robot startups will resegment existing markets. To a certain extent the robot part of a successful robot startup will and ought to disappear. iRobot’s Roomba is the most successful consumer robot in the world but to most people it’s just a vacuum cleaner. Intuitive’s surgical system augments the doctor. Every toy aisle in the US has disconcertingly lively dolls and toys but very few are called robots.

At the recent Maker Startup Weekend, Dale Dougherty talked about the importance of creating physical products that people wanted. [article by Ahmed Siddiqui] Dougherty pointed out that people pay for physical products all the time, a point sometimes overlooked when cataloguing the difficulties of hardware startups. People pay a lot more for physical objects that are aesthetically satisfying as well. You can want things that you don’t really need.

Two other opportunities for robotics startups are robots as interfaces or translators; and robots as copiers or creators. Examples; robots that convert scientific or mechanical instrumentation or sensors into accessible easy to operate or understand forms, like humanoid robots do; or robots that reproduce something useful, like a 3d printer does.

However, the robot we love the most is the completely new product for a new market. The crazy amazing knee sled 4.0 that flies. There have been very few leaps into the big blue ocean. But the technology used to be a lot more expensive and a lot less common than it is becoming now. The democratization of technology is well demonstrated by the DIY drones movement.

As Chris Anderson from Wired and DIY Drones explains, a few years ago autonomous air vehicles cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and there were only a handful. As more are made, the technology gets cheaper. As the technology gets cheaper, more are made. This takes drones out of the rarified military and industrial air and into the hands of the hobbyist, small businesses and consumers.

Robot startups will flourish as stealth technologies, re segmenting markets and making better shoes. But as we become more familiar with new robotic capabilities, as robots cross the chasm under the guise of toys, hobbies and domestic appliances, robots will launch new markets as new products. We just don’t know what yet. Imagine what startups will happen when every second kid on the street has access to a drone!

Robot Launch Pad is a community interested in exploring robot startups from a lean customer centric perspective. We’re involved in a lot of great events in Silicon Valley. This is just the start of the discussion about robot startups and it’s taking off!

So, be startup robot shoes – kind of like Go Go Gadget shoes, only MORE AWESOME.