3DR, also known as 3D Robotics, is an American company located in Berkeley, California that produces enterprise drone software for construction, engineering and mining firms, as well as government agencies. Prior to 2016, the company designed and marketed commercial and recreational

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

s including consumer drones, ready-to-fly quadcopters for

aerial photography Aerial photography (or airborne imagery) is the taking of photographs from an aircraft or other flight, airborne platforms. When taking motion pictures, it is also known as aerial videography. Platforms for aerial photography include fixed-wi ...

and mapping, and fixed-wing UAVs based on the Ardupilot platform. However, as of September 2016, 3DR and the major open source Ardupilot development community separated due to disagreements over the license of the open source code on which 3DR products are based. The company was co-founded as 3D Robotics in 2009 by Chris Anderson and Jordi Muñoz. The pair met online through the ''DIY Drones'' community, which Anderson originally started for aerial vehicle enthusiasts.

Products of 3DR

Below is a list of products released by 3DR. The Solo Drone was released in May 2015 and marketed to the consumer and professional aerial photography market. It is powered by two computers and designed specifically for the

GoPro GoPro, Inc. (marketed as GoPro and sometimes stylized as GoPRO) is an American technology company founded in 2002 by Nick Woodman. It manufactures action cameras and develops its own mobile apps and video editing software, video-editing software ...

Hero camera. The stated aim of the Solo drone is the ease of both flying the drone and taking professional aerial photos and videos. The IRIS+ Drone was released in September 2014. It was designed as a recreational drone, and it uses a mounted GoPro camera to take pictures. The drone is capable of achieving a top speed of 40 miles (64 kilometers) per hour and has a range of up to 3,280 feet. The X8 Quadcopter was released in November 2014. It has a modular design and comes in two versions. The X8+, with a built-in

gimbal A gimbal is a pivoted support that permits rotation of an object about an axis. A set of three gimbals, one mounted on the other with orthogonal pivot axes, may be used to allow an object mounted on the innermost gimbal to remain independent of ...

and GoPro camera, is aimed at aerial photography and

cinematography Cinematography () is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens (optics), lens to focus reflected light from objects into a real image that is transferred to some image sen ...

; the X8-M quadcopter is intended for mapping applications. Both X8 versions support

waypoint A waypoint is a point or place on a route or line of travel, a stopping point, an intermediate point, or point at which course is changed, the first use of the term tracing to 1880. In modern terms, it most often refers to coordinates which spe ...

navigation technology. The Aero-M Fixed Wing UAV was released in November 2014. It is fully automated and has a mapping platform that creates geo-referenced and ortho-rectified mosaics. This fixed wing drone has an estimated flight time of up to 40 minutes and is able to photograph an area of up to 250 acres per flight. The Pix4D software allows for the creation of geo-referenced, photogrammetrized, and ortho-rectified mosaics from the images. The Aero-M UAV is intended to benefit conservation efforts and industries such as farming and construction, through the creation of geo-referenced maps. As of March 2016, 3DR announced that they would no longer be manufacturing drones. In response to the company ceasing to produce hardware, a former employee, interviewed in Forbes magazine in 2016, is quoted as saying "3DR was a $100 million blunder based on ineptitude."

Dronecode

3DR is a founding member of the Dronecode Consortium, a non-profit organization governed by the

Linux Foundation The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to support Linux development and open-source software projects. Background The Linux Foundation started as Open Source Development Labs in 2000 to standardize and prom ...

. The Consortium was formed in 2014 with the goal of using open source

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

for the benefit of users with affordable and more reliable UAV software. Other notable members are

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

, Parrot SA, and Walkera.

References

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BBC News: The Mexican immigrant who set up a global drone firm
Electronics companies established in 2009 Companies based in Berkeley, California Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturers 2009 establishments in California American companies established in 2009 Technology companies established in 2009 Unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturers of the United States