Engineer Builds Drone From Scratch, Destroys It on First Day | Expedition Raw

2m read

·Nov 11, 2024

This was my first major expedition, so this is the dream, right? It's a bit hairy to actually get on. My main job is to get aerial shots for conservation research. This expedition happened in 2012, and even though it doesn't seem like that long ago, drone technology was a lot different than it is today. You couldn't just buy these really nice, flyable, off-the-shelf drones. I built this thing from scratch, and at one point, I was even pretty much just sleeping in the office to make sure that I could get this thing done.

"Uh, is there anything special that you want, Mike?" It's very, very windy. The seabirds, you can see, they're kind of just like hovering there in this immense amount of wind. So I decided, all right, I'm going to kind of do this cool banking turn. Maybe there'll be some seabirds in the frame— all artistic and everything. But the drone is turning as I'm making this maneuver, so it's turning, but then the wind catches it.

"Okay, I'm really trying not to let anybody know, but I'm really freaking out inside. What is happening with this drone?" I cut the engines and let it fall to the ground. "It'll be fine, it'll be fine," I'm telling myself. So I go to the tree line, and on the other side is this big rocky beach.

"Lasted how long? 30 seconds?" Pretty much the drone fell into the ocean and then got smashed to bits on the rocks. It's gone. Lesson learned. Like my boss says, just don't crash it.

"It's really windy, windy. Hi, I'm with Alex Honnold, and we are attempting to climb 45 of the most iconic towers in the desert."

Trade and tariffs | APⓇ Microeconomics | Khan Academy

Warren Buffett: Read These 10 Books if You Want to be Rich

View All

Not Forgotten Update 2014 - Smarter Every Day 126

[music] Hey it’s me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Day. So last year about this time I made a video on the Project For Awesome website asking you to vote for an organization called Not Forgotten that’s working to get sexually exploited children off…

Designing Characters with Deep Learning: Spellbrush (W18) - YC Gaming Tech Talks 2020

My name is Corey; I’m the CEO at Spell Rush, and I’m here to talk to you today about designing characters with deep learning. So, um, we’re Spell Rush. We’re a YC company as well; we’re building deep learning tools for art and artists. What exactly does …

Water potential worked example

A zucchini squash was peeled and cut into six identical cubes. After being weighed, each cube was soaked in a different sucrose solution for 24 hours in an open container and at a constant temperature of 21 degrees Celsius. The cubes were then removed fro…

Example scaling parabola

Function G can be thought of as a scaled version of f of x equal to x^2. Write the equation for G of x. So like always, pause this video and see if you can do it on your own. All right, now let’s work through this together. So the first thing that we mig…

The Modern Struggle Is Fighting Weaponized Addiction

In some very deep level, all pleasure creates its own offsetting pain and fear of loss on the other side. I had a tweet recently where I said, in an age of abundance, pursuing pleasure for its own sake creates addiction. A Miyamoto Musashi line: do not pu…

Crazy BABY Eyes ... and More: IMG! #44

This cow has an illusion face. See the people about to kiss? And oh my gosh, what’s this? Nice. It’s episode 44 of IMG! If you eat too many Pringles you’ll feel like this. And if you look like this, your kids will too. Now, if you look at this right in t…

Engineer Builds Drone From Scratch, Destroys It on First Day | Expedition Raw

More Articles