3D Robotics Unveils DroneKit, an Open-Sourced API for Drone App Development

3D Robotics, North America’s largest consumer drone manufacturer, announced on Thursday the release of DroneKit, a free, open-source Application Programming Interface (API) for drone app development. DroneKit pulls together years of 3DR’s research and development into a single platform which can be used to develop web-based, mobile, and on-board drone applications.

There are a number of companies racing to get new drone hardware to market but 3DR understands the true key to getting drones into peoples’ homes lies with the ability to provide users with meaningful applications created by anyone, for anyone. It is exactly the same model that manufactured demand for iPhones; open-source app development and publishing software meant Apple’s users could create value for the iPhone at an exponential rate, leading to more sales.

“Unlike other APIs for drones, there are no levels of access to DroneKit; it’s completely flexible and open,” noted Brandon Basso, VP of Software Engineering at 3DR, said in the press release. “The platform works on laptops as well as mobile devices. Best of all, once an app is created, the app automatically works on any computing platform—the interface is always the same.”

From the release:

Before DroneKit, if you wanted to create any of these single-purpose apps for a drone you’d have to reinvent the wheel, building all the flight control software from the ground up. DroneKit abstracts away the hard parts of writing flight control software, leaving you a clean, modern interface to code on.

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

DroneKit powers the most successful flight control programs in the world:

• Tower (formerly Droidplanner), hands-down the best flight planning mobile app out there, was built on DroneKit for Android
• Droneshare, the global social network for drone pilots, is built on DroneKit web services
• Project Tango Indoor Navigation is built on Pixhawk, APM and Tower
• IMSI/Design TurboSite aerial reporting app for construction

To get started with DroneKit, you can go to the new dedicated homepage dronekit.io.

To see some of the drone apps currently available on the market, check out DroneLife’s drone app database. 

And let us know in the comments what kind of apps you would like to see developed with DroneKit!