We are two (may recruit more) students of computer science and robotics, considering a helicopter-based (or other VTOL aircraft) UAV for a robotics competition in the fall of 2011.
Funding is limited to our own economies - no external support. The project goal is to take off, fly to GPS waypoint, and land, as quickly as possible.
If time and economy allows, we might add a camera to our project. I've been looking around online and it seems a 4-channel rc heli should be able to do the flying. If this effort fails, the backup plan is a rocket-assisted glider.

Where should we start? We have already decided on using the TI MSP-430 as a development platform for its low power consumption, to reduce weight. The chip + programmer should arrive in early January. Not sure about thermopile vs accelerometer/gyro, however a redundant system is always a good idea, so we might use both. Basically, we're looking on input about what would be a good platform to make the hardware pretty stable on its own so we can focus on making the autopilot/GPS/waypoint system mostly. Since this is DIY and for a competition, we don't want to buy a premade autopilot solution. Wouldn't learn anything from that either. :]

Last but not least, thanks to DIY Drones for providing this awesome community!

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  • There is no explicit requirement, but the more we build from scratch the more understanding we'll gain - and we're doing this to learn as much as we can about automatic aeronautic control systems design.
  • 3D Robotics
    Are you required to design your own autopilot from scratch? There are so many open source autopilots out there already (ArduPilot, UAV DevBoard, etc) that it seems a waste to spend all your time reinventing the wheel (writing the code alone could take a year) when you could be focusing on more interesting higher-level things like AI and mission controls.
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