Land Rover’s new Discovery search and rescue SUV has a roof-mounted drone | Hacker News Reader

Land Rover’s new Discovery search and rescue SUV has a roof-mounted drone

techcrunch.com

39 pointspythongirl32 comments

Surprisingly the Daily Mail has a much more extensive write up of the vehicle and drone [0], along with plenty of photos. Normally I'd avoid linking to the Mail!

Jag's SVO group does some remarkable vehicles from the gorgeous F-Type Project 7, to bullet proof Range Rovers.

[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4288250/Red-Cross-he...

I'm sure there's a point in on the adoption graph of any technology which should be labeled as "Used to generate PR buzz". Second Life, 3D printers, etc. My gut feeling is that it comes just before the mass realization that something isn't ever going to be mainstream.

Maybe I"m missing something, but what's the purpose of launching from a roof box? It just seems like a gimmick. I can launch a multi-rotor from the roof of my car, but that's hardly news-worthy.

Second, why a quad-copter? Anyone that knows anything about multirotors knows that a quad-coptor has multiple single points of failure, where a hex or octo can be controlled with single or multiple failures respectively.

Seems like they just slapped a hobby drone on the roof of a car "because marketing". It doesn't deserve to be on HN.

I think the idea is you can be driving around and launch and recover it without leaving the vehicle. While one person is driving, another navigating, another operating a radio, a fourth person can operate a drone without interfering with any of them.

That seems useful to me. I guess it must be useful to the Red Cross as well since they're using it. Do you have more experience in search and rescue than they do?

> "because marketing"

Who are you quoting with these quotation marks? That's not why they say they've done it. If it's your opinion don't make it look like you're quoting someone else.

Your argument is weak, and clearly you recognise that, as the to appeals to authority, and mistaken [1 8a] questioning of something as trivial as the use of quotation marks are a poor attempt to distract from the question.

[1] http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/quotes.asp

No I didn't appeal to authority, I appealed to the fact that they had used the tool and nobody in these comments had. That's concrete relevant experience in the topic at hand, not just authority.

> I appealed to the fact that they had used the tool and nobody in these comments had.

So demonstrating that you didn't even read the article.

It's not due until June 2017 (how long does it take to fit a roofbox to a car?!) and then then only for pretend use in a training facility.

It's also clear from the video that the GUI is an artists impression.

Like I said "because marketing".

Another cool thing about Land Rovers and Jaguars is that the body panels are built from ~50% recycled aluminium.

Why is that cool? Many cars are made from wholly or partially recycled raw materials. The only thing that is hard to recycle is certain plastics but future recycling is already part of the design phase of almost all vehicles.

This article:

https://www.thebalance.com/auto-recycling-facts-and-figures-...

has the percentage of recycled material in a car pegged at ~80%.

Not OP, but my understanding is that aluminum paneling is uncommon enough and supposedly superior due to lighter weight than conventional steel paneling. Perhaps the major draw is aluminum paneling, with the 50% recycled material a nice extra?

That's reflected in the vehicle price, aluminum vehicles are substantially more expensive (and more expensive to work on after an accident) than steel.

Aluminum is extremely well recyclable, pretty much everything you buy that is made of aluminum will have a substantial portion of recycled material in it.

It's pure marketing to make it seem as though that's special somehow. The whole idea of something like an SUV being somehow green is a nice example of how 'green marketing' can be ridiculous.

"Magnets lock the drone in place while the Discovery is login, ...", "... extending the Red Cross staff’s ability o cover terrain beyond ...", "... partnership Land Rover has had with the Red Cross across the glob, ..."

I was going to go and post a link to Paul Graham's "Submarine" article[0], but instead, I have to ask: What ever happened to editing? I know it's fashionable to be first with the news these days whether you know the full story or not, but this is just terrible. I'd be ashamed if it were my name on the article.

(Any typos in the above are a clever use of irony ;-) )

[0] http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Couldn't agree more. Did the author not even bother to run this through a basic spell check? Even my browser will highlight words in a text-entry field that are misspelled.

I don't think any of those examples would be caught by spellcheck. "login", "o" and "glob" are all considered words by mine.

Maybe the car-periscope from "Curb Your Enthusiasm" was a billion dollar idea after all.

cars should have drones instead of dashcams in future

Drones are nice and all, but using a drone as a dash-cam, that's going to be expensive as hell since the drone would have to have a top speed equal to the top speed of the vehicle. Weather conditions, powering the device, obstacle detection.

it can be a tethered drone

Bridge ahead. Tree branch ahead!. Why am I participating in this?

A drone with a camera that could be deployed when required rather than permanently could be useful for parking manoeuvres, extra visibility when overtaking, checking out why traffic has stopped, and so on.

Would be better to have a stick with a camera. Or many sticks with cameras.

Now I am thinking a building one for when I am out in the bush with my 4wd. Anyone know of a way to tell the depth of water from a drone?

Drop a buoy with a sensor to reflect off the bottom of the "Creek" or different bands ultrasound/vs other frequencies to tell ground vs. Water I don't know.

Hmmm. You mean a water-landing drone with a Hummingbird fishfinder-type thing attached? I like this idea.

Haha that sounds complicated. It could just be a little bouy that you drop with a winch (this isn't complicated?) and it's pretty much a simple ir-range finder type deal. I just don't know the water would play out. Use a lower-frequency like the submarines do haha.

I saw an overlanding video that showed some stunning overhead views of the vehicles traipsing through Canada and now I'm obsessed with getting a Mavic Pro this year to use when I'm offroading.

Unfortunately I suspect that, even with auto-follow, using a drone while driving off-road will prove too much of a hassle. I'll probably need a passenger.

This is a bit of a wall of text, but please don't ever try to fly a mavic with your hands off the controls.

I love my mavic, but I feel DJI's advertising is super misleading and a bit immoral in the fact that they imply you can just press a button and make it follow you while you put away the controller and do your thing. The reality is that the detect and avoid capabilities of consumer MAVs are laughable.

The reality is this: the current generation of consumer drones aren't anywhere close to attaining safe autonomy at low altitudes or urban areas. They can also do a lot more damage than you'd expect; those flimsy plastic props carry enough energy to cut you to the bone no problem. You're legally required to maintain direct control of any MAV you operate, more importantly, it's really irresponsible not to. Things like the mavic seem like they're really predictable and easy to fly, and 99% of the time they are at this point, but at some stage it WILL have a gps glitch or experience gps occlusion, and it will fuck shit up unless you intervene. I'm really uncomfortable with a whole wave of people buying stuff like the Mavic today and flying them near other people or property with 0 training on what to do if the hand-holdy autonomy fails - which it will at some stage.

If you want to break the law and experiment will hands-off operation, please at least do it somewhere far away from populated areas and really far away from airports. Better yet, just don't.

This would be well away from the beaten path, but that's excellent information, thanks. I'll wait until I have someone to fly from the passenger seat.

I was planning to stop completely and operate the clone to check ahead about water-crossings, mud, bulldust, loose scree, things over the crest of steep hills and dunes and other hazards.

What’s the battery life like for a drone that’s trying to keep up with a car?

Now you can have range anxiety for your drone as well as your car…

it can be connected, it'll only have propellers and wings and a wire.

but it'll be pulled forward by the car itself.

propellers for slow speeds, and wings and flats for when the car goes faster.

then you can drive your car in 3rd person.

Pulling it along is fine while the car is going straight but a sharp corner or sharp braking could give the drone some problems!

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