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Permalink Reply by Nick on August 3, 2011 at 4:32pm

Ardupilot is a good starting point. If you haven't flown a rc heli you shouldn't try the quadcopter until you have. I haven't dealt with the Parrot AR drone but I heard its not to hard to fly. The APM board I believe has been used to make a UGV not shure how it turned out. But with APM, if you can program it you can do it (eventually). Could you explain non-modality? I dont understand.

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Permalink Reply by Josh on August 3, 2011 at 5:14pm

Thanks for the reply Nick. What I meant by "non-modality specific" was that the software system was not designed for a specific type of vehicle, and deployable on a wide range of hardware platforms. That way all vehicle types (planes/helis, boats, subs, cars, etc) can use the underlying system by adding or building modules that extend upon a baseline vehicle framework.

 

I would expect such a framework would contain all the basic building blocks required by all vehicular systems: navigation, communications, possibly perception (for autonomy).

 

The closest frameworks I have seen to this is Willow Garage's ROS and Microsoft's RDS. These systems are a little too general, but may serve as a better starting point, whilst using Parrot AR drone and Ardupilot as implementation guides for the additional modules.

 

Thanks again.

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Permalink Reply by Nick on August 6, 2011 at 12:30pm

Ok,I don't know of any mature non-modality specific hardware right now but I'll look around. If you find anything else interesting keep us updated.

Regards,
Nick

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3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on August 6, 2011 at 12:43pm

That's pretty much APM: it's the only universal autopilot on the market. It supports planes, all sorts of copters (ranging from one blade to eight) cars, boats, simulators, etc.

They all share the same libraries but the logic is different depending on need. There's nothing else like this out there.

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Permalink Reply by Adrian Abordo on August 5, 2011 at 11:52am

You can try looking at the MOOS framework developed by MIT and the US Navy. It's currently used for marine vehicles but can conceivably be expanded to include other platforms as well. MOOS-IVP

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Permalink Reply by Josh on August 8, 2011 at 5:01pm

Thanks Chris and Adrian; that gives me something to work with.

 

Has anyone played around with Willow Garage's ROS? If so, how easy is it to extend to a UAV system?

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3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on August 8, 2011 at 5:11pm

Yes, our members have. Please see the ROS user group in the list on the right of this page.

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