Meet Birdhouse

The first personal, robotic airport for consumer drones (patent pending), compatible with DJI's Phantom series and others.

How much do you actually fly your drone? Do you spend more time managing it? ... flight batteries, media cards, propellers, transport and other setup/teardown. What if a device could remove all that hands-on and automate your drone down to a "service"? What if that automation included LOS and R/C telepresence? Into radio-impenetrable structures or vehicles?

Birdhouse installs on your roof or deck outside, and plugs into your TV inside, a weather-tight shelter opening to a flight deck. Remotely launch and fly, with the drone's view projected on your big-screen TV. After landing, your drone is retracted automatically for recharging and media downloads–fly 10X a day with zero hands-on!

Birdhouse also integrates with industrial UAS through a comprehensive REST API, for full programmatic control.

Features

• immersive, on-demand virtual flight
• standard HDMI connection to your TV
• compact (just larger than the drone it shelters)
• flexible options to mount on a house, vehicle, boat, whatever
• automates all manual ops:
  • on-board battery charging (no more battery swaps)
  • automatic media download to local HDD (no more media swaps)
  • automatic media clearing (no more launching with a full or missing card)
  • drone propellers managed (no need to remove)
  • launch pad doubles as a shelter (no more packing and unpacking)

Use Cases

Ski Resort Dispatch

Dispatchers equipped with Birdhouse units directly launch SAR (search and rescue) drones in response to emergency calls, for example a missing persons or avalanche report. Within seconds, visual and thermal eyes are on-scene to locate victims under the snow for rescue workers.

Turn-key Orthomosaic & Topo Scans (3D scene capture)

First responders to accident & crime scenes are typically obligated to record those scenes as evidence. Increasingly, orthomosaic scans are admissible in court, and in fact the higher levels of visual and spatial detail are preferable to standard 2D imagery with its limited lines of site. Orthomosaics, by contrast, capture an entire visual field for reconstructions from any angle.

Beyond emergency services, applications abound for a quick, cheap, mobile solution for large-scale ortho capture.

Offshore Exploration, Fishing

Put a little Birdhouse on your boat and discover the benefits of a flying ocean-cam! Explore a small island or inaccessible feature from a safe distance. Scout fish, even surgically bait them from above. Or capture epic video, launching in seconds to catch, say, a surprise encounter with flying fish (sad though, since its more "fleeing" fish).

Scouting Police Actions

9-1-1 reports shots fired from a residential building, but the shooter's location isn't known. A Birdhouse-equipped squad car launches a drone to scout the situation, streaming realtime to other vehicles converging on the scene. The shooter is located on the Eastern side of the building, tipping officers to approach from the West.

Perimeter Response

Birdhouse keeps watch over a large property, integrated in a security system which connects a ring of perimeter sensors to the system's drone. When a  sensor trips, the waypoint is reported to Birdhouse, which programs and launches an out-n-back mission to scan the area and stream footage to a central Alert Desk for triage.

Chained pipeline inspection

Birdhouses are placed at 10 mile intervals. A fleet of drones fly in rotation: scanning, landing, and recharging in alternation to build a seamless visual mesh. Scans are cloud-composited to a near-realtime, full pipeline view, speeding diagnosis of leaks and other threats.