Every established industry has a minimum level of standardization - consumer devices have USB, car tires fit more than one brand. The drone industry is maturing rapidly and has a need for standardization. Pixhawk as open source hardware is ubiquitous in the commercial drone industry and this talk will begin with shedding some light what this semi-standard has achieved for the industry already.
Needs for standardization in flight control are very similar across use cases, and main building blocks are shared amongst diverse hardware designs. The variety of use cases and the attempt to use COTS components with the goal of reducing cost can easily conflict when platforms get smaller or hardware requirements get more demanding, e.g. for certification and mass production. As a result, many manufacturers create custom-made PCB designs with a long list of custom components, pinouts, interfaces, and placements which lead to cost and time intensive evaluation and manufacturing processes that require significant effort to keep up with technological advancements. Knowledge and expertise are rarely shared between vendors and new platforms are engineered from scratch.
In his talk, I will explain why using hardware reference designs is the key to scale and rapid development for a drone manufacturer.
Hardware reference designs guarantee compatibility with upstream open source software and other peripherals. Moreover, sharing hardware design principles ensures compliance with requirements on placement and integration and improves the quality, reliability, and robustness of these components. Hardware reference designs are an excellent choice to create industry-wide standards when faced with a wide variety of products and use cases, reduce the room for error and mistakes when building complex products like drones, and provide a solid foundation when customization and flexibility prevent a one-size-fits-all solution.