3D Robotcis (3DR) was originally born from DIYDrones.com , a community for people who enjoy building their own drones, which was started by Chris Anderson, who was then editor-in-chief of Wired. Chris Anderson and his children built their own drones using programmable LEGO, which led to the launch of DIYDrones.com, where a 19-year-old Mexican student named Jordi Muñoz, built a flight controller using the accelerometer of a Wii remote.
Later, Chris and Jordi launched 3DR and developed the first ArduPilot (hardware) based on a 16MHz, 8-bit Arduino, and the more advanced APM (ArduPilot Mega) and APM2, which are DIY flight controllers. The first APM boards were manufactured by Sparkfun, a major electronics distributor that also held the Autonomous Vehicle Competition. Naturally, the firmware written for the Arduino board, ArduPilot (software), was implemented as an Arduino sketch.
Meanwhile, the PX4/Pixhawk project was started at the Swiss Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), a pioneering research in drone control, with the goal of creating a 32-bit flight controller using open source hardware and open source software.
3DR was selected as the manufacturing partner for Pixhawk, and the ArduPilot and PX4 projects collaborated to create Pixhawk, a hardware compatible with both software. 3D Robotics has been enthusiastic about the production and sale of Pixhawk and financial support for ArduPilot developers since the early stages, so it is often mistaken as a 3DR product, but PX4/Pixhawk originated from ETH Zurich, and ArduPilot originated from DIYDrones.com.
Both PX4 and ArduPilot were originally projects that combined hardware and software, but before we knew it, the hardware and software evolved independently, so both PX4 and ArduPilot exist as both hardware and software, and it is very confusing because it is not clear which one is being referred to just by the name. Zenbot distinguishes between them as follows: PX4 (software), PX4 (hardware), ArduPilot (software), ArduPilot (hardware).
What is unique about the PX4/Pixhawk/ArduPilot project is that not only the software, but also much of the hardware is open source. It is relatively inexpensive yet high-performance, and can be freely expanded with the right technical skills, so it is said that there are now as many as one million drones equipped with Pixhawk-based flight controllers flying around the world. Of course, Zenbot has only used Pixhawk-based controllers from the beginning.
The hardware is also open source, so what was initially a microcontroller-based hardware now comes in a variety of products, including Linux single-board computers, and both PX4 (software) and ArduPilot (software) are compatible with a wide range of platforms.
As you can see, 3DR became famous for manufacturing and selling products for both DIYers and professionals. However, when DJI, which also made DIY products, achieved success by selling drones designed for aerial photography to consumers, 3DR decided not to follow suit. They quickly abandoned their loyal customer base of DIY users and tried to enter the consumer market, only to be completely defeated, as you all know.
3DR rode the drone bubble and raised 10 billion yen from the start, which raised expectations and led to setting excessive sales targets before the market was mature. In the end, they pushed ahead with unreasonable upfront investment and product development that ignored their existing customers and their own strengths, which led to failure and a typical pattern of dealing with defeat – a major course correction, business downsizing, and mass layoffs. After that, 3DR quickly gave up on selling its own product, Solo, which had made a much-talked-about debut in the consumer aerial photography drone market as a rival to the DJI Phantom, and instead made a major shift to specialize in selling it in combination with Site Scan, a business solution for surveying, but sales seem to be lackluster.
Since excessive capital increases are nothing but a business risk, I think it is an ironclad rule for venture managers to keep fundraising to a minimum, but perhaps they were dazzled by the sheer amount of money. The drone industry is like a repeat of the dot-com bubble, but 3DR still raised an additional $53M in Series D funding in April, so perhaps this means that expectations for the industry are still high.
Now, finally to the main topic, 3DR has finally announced that its Site Scan service will support DJI aircraft.
https://3dr.com/blog/3dr-dji-enterprise-atlas
It was clear that they had completely given up on the hardware. Since they have a partnership with AutoDesk, the largest 3D software company, in surveying-related matters, I understand they would be in trouble if 3DR were to go out of business. Even if they do what DJI aircraft can do, they have no differentiating factor, and it doesn’t seem like they can compete with the leading companies like Pix4D, so am I the only one who feels that this is just going to put a noose around their necks?
As an aside, Jordi Muñoz, a Mexican student who founded 3DR with Chris Anderson, has already left 3DR and started a company called mRobotics . mRobotics took over 3DR’s manufacturing facilities and went back to its roots to manufacture and sell high-quality Pixhawk and its successors to DIY users. In this respect, in contrast to 3DR, which sells cheap HobbyKing clones with its own logo slapped on them, mRobotics continues to improve its products from the user’s perspective and is very impressed with its attention to its product lineup and availability.