3D Robotics (3DR) Announces DroneKit SDK and API for Developing Drone Apps

by GIS Resources , 2015-04-04

3D Robotics (3DR), North America’s largest consumer drone manufacturer, has released a new open software product called DroneKit – Software Development Kit (SDK) and Application Programming Interface (API) for drone app development.

DroneKit allows developers to build Web-based, mobile and onboard computer applications for drones and APM-powered vehicles.

Developers can develop apps for three different platforms: mobile apps (DroneKit Android); cloud based web-based application (DroneKit Cloud); and onboard computer apps (DroneKit Python).

Mobile apps make it easy to create customized Android experiences for in-flight interaction. Developers can use DroneKit for Python to develop ground control for laptops.

Tower (DroidPlanner 3) App
Credit: Google Play Store

Onboard computer apps help you create powerful apps that communicate directly with the APM flight controller from a companion computer. Run computation-intensive computer vision, path planning, or 3D modeling tasks using the DroneKit for Python library.

Web based applications can communicates with DroneKit Cloud and download drone data in flight. Send live flight logs, photo and video from the air to the cloud. Let DroneKit Cloud store your data and access it with simple REST protocols.

DroneShare Cloud Application

DroneKit allows you to:

• Fly paths with waypoints
• Fly in spline path with fine grain control over vehicle velocity and position
• Have the drone follow a GPS target
• Control the camera and gimbal with regions of interest points
• Access full telemetry from the drone over 3DR Radio, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or over the internet
• View playbacks and log analysis of any mission

Advantages of DroneKit:

• Truly open; no “levels” of access that you get from other proprietary programs
• Computer agnostic: Create an app for controlling drones on whatever computing platform you want, and the interface is always the same
• Works on planes, copters and rovers
• Works on laptop computers as well as mobile devices
• Provides web-based access to vehicle data

DroneKit is free open to developers how can use to create web-based drone apps or even apps onboard the drones themselves. DroneKit works with any vehicle powered by the APM flight code.

Some of the live examples of apps develop using DroneKit are Tower and Droneshare.

To find out how to write your own application for UAVs, and to walk through some example apps from 3DR, please visit: http://dronekit.io  

Read more information about DroneKit SDK and API