• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    China just mass produces but for the most part when the current class of true drones were being created I remember a lot of amateurs working on it and others, china being one of them stealing the base tech.

    Wait… you think amateur hobbyists out in the American suburbs are inventing new forms of independent flight technology from kits they bought on Amazon. And then some of the largest and most well-financed universities in the world are stealing the technology?

    Just purely out of curiosity, who do you think Mingjing Qi, a professor of energy and power engineering at Beihang University stole this schematic from?

    • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Nope. I was involved and it was people all over the world who started building autonomous and semi autonomous drones them starting back in the mid 2000’s when cheap inertial and gyro stabilizers started appearing. I remember the open source projects that eventually matured into commercial products. China was by no means at the forefront of that. It was hobbyist the world over. Some were students at universities. Some lived in the suburbs and villages and big cities. The world over. Way before the alpha tech in that article. That they have taken those first steps and mass produced them by no means implies they invented it all.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        it was people all over the world

        :-/

        What planet is China on?

        China was by no means at the forefront of that.

        I’m assuming you’re saying this as a Beihang alumnus?

        • Eezyville@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          You know they can’t include Chinese innovations if they want to single out China and make them the enemy. The fact is the Chinese own 90% of the consumer drone market because of their innovations. I assume they have good military drones too.