CrazyFlie — a great case about drone collaborative communities
Have you ever really thought that drones could be part of your household? From fiction movies to uncountable literature, the idea that robots can interact with us on a daily basis seems rather distant.
These days, there are many startups, companies and projects concentrated on this task. And what looked far from reality a little time ago, now is part of our lives. Today, a drone fits in the palm of your hand. That’s CrazyFlie 2.0, a drone developed and designed by BitCraze, an open-source project development platform.
27 grams of company
CrazyFlie is the result of an initial idea: get an electronic board to fly. The designers built a board flying machine for indoor purpose.
A flight bot that weighs only 27 grams sounds like a bit small. And yes it is. With a durable design, it is a drone packed with an open and adaptable structure that allows users to innovate in terms of functionalities and applications.
In addition to its size, both assembling and handling are very practical. Quite quickly, any person is able to put together a drone without any soldering, just by attaching the motor to the circuit-board frame. CrazyFlie has expansion decks equipped with automatic detection features. It supports a variety of software and runs on different operating systems. It’s a small quadcopter that, as we said, has real adaptability for different jobs. This is what makes it particular and unique.
The benefit loop
CrazyFlie also has other benefits worth noting. As an open source collaborative project, there is a developer and user community actively working together around it. This virtual ecosystem is becoming more relevant and impactful by the day, as further knowledge is shared amongst community members to improve CrazyFlie capabilities.
This process is generating what we call a “benefit loop”, which is a constant iteration process where everyone is encouraged to share new findings discovered through experience. The open-source structure proposed by BitCraze developers enables free product development.
Why do we emphasize it? Well, this is clearly a new way of working, where the possibility to obtain, improve and share something, is available to everyone else. It not only democratizes access to knowledge, but also fosters collaboration and is utilized as a development platform for new ideas. Last but not least, any open source initiative impacts directly on the generation of knowledge, where anybody can read and learn about everything. Hence, ideas are from everyone to everyone.
CrazyFlie is the synthesis of a small quadcopter that brings incredible flexibility with an open-source platform for developers that, together, offer a great opportunity for further innovation. The result, a vibrant community of experts developing the drone tech of the future around the world.
