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iPhone 4 as Autopilot + OSD + TC/TM

Posted by lionel on June 7, 2010 at 12:25pm
Good evening,

I just watched Apple's introduction of their new iPhone
and it looks like a killer platform for everyUAV/UGV  DYIer around
It comes with all the needed processing power: ARM based + GPU with a very
good autonomy on the battery (300Hrs) + a HD video camera all for a very light 137g
The needed communication subsystems and last but not least
a decent IMU and a multitasking OS (iOS)


What do fellow member think of it ?




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Replies

  • Developer
    Michael Smith July 15, 2010 at 9:44pm
    The iOS platform is not a good choice for the compute element in a UAV.

    The iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch are designed as user-oriented consumer devices. There are aspects of the system (messaging, for one) that are directly at odds with what you want in an embedded controller.

    OTOH, you could make a pretty mean base station with an iOS device.
  • Mike Ornstein June 28, 2010 at 4:55am
    So I've done a little further research, which has gotten easier since the phone has actually been released, and have found out a little about what's going on with the gyro in the iPhone 4. From iFixit's Teardown:

    "...the AGD1 is the new 3 axis gyroscope that we believe is designed and manufactured by ST Micro for Apple. The package marks on this device do not appear to be the currently available commercial part, L3G4200D. The commercial version of this gyroscope is yet to be released — Apple got first dibs on it."

    The commercial part of which they speak can be found on st.com. I don't imagine the one on the iPhone to be any worse in terms of resolution or accuracy, so I figured someone more familiar with the necessary specs could check out that datasheet. I've attached it for convenience.

    17116.pdf

  • Xander June 9, 2010 at 4:04pm
    Close, but I'd say the price is still a bit prohibitively high (without contract) and I'd rather not have to deal with Apple's closed system. Hopefully this will push more phones to have gyros. In a year or two I expect we'll start seeing dirt cheap Android phones (under $200 without contract) with most if not all of the same features. Then we might really have something that can compete as a cheap autopilot.
  • Mike Ornstein June 8, 2010 at 5:44am
    I too am interested in using the iPhone4 as a central component for a UAV platform. If it is possible to interface the iPhone with four speed controllers, and the sensor data is decent, I feel like you can't go with such a capable device. Are there specs available anywhere that describe the quality of the integrated inertial measurement stuff in the iPhone4? If it turns out that the output from the gyros and accelerometers (and magnetometer) are good enough for stable flight (a hover in my case) I am confident I can assemble a crack team of programmers to get the software side of an iPhone4 based UAV up and running, tuned for use in a multi-rotor setup.
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson June 7, 2010 at 12:43pm
    It looks awesome, but you still need to get the data out to drive servos and interface with other sensors. Apple doesn't make it easy to access the hardware port.

    I bet you could use Ari Krupnick's PPM audio-out app to get data out, but how to get data in??
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