Hello Everyone,
My name is Evan and I am from Santa Barbara High School. I am currently working on my science project which is to create a UAV Heat Seeking Drone. I did my first flight test of just the plane with an enhanced motor and it went well. I am following a guide seen in the Maker Magazine Make: 19 done by Jordi Munoz. I am trying to make my drone compact and powered by solar panels. I have a thermal camera that is being donated to my project so that I can have a live image of the flight on my computer and be able to see hot spots. I just ordered the parts as seen in Make :19, however I am trying to get a hold of the flight program and coding so that all the equipment worked together. If you know anything about this article in the Make Magazine I would love to here form you. I am also looking for a company involved in solar panels that is willing to donate to my project, if you know of a company that would help me a ton. Thanks for your help and I can't wait to see the final project.
Thank You
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Replies
@Evan,
It will be quite a tall order to accomplish when you use words like "small", "efficient", and IR in the same sentence.
The APM has inputs for voltage measurement that the rovers use for obstacle avoidance. When an obstacle a certain distance from the rover is detected, the rover is steered away from the obstacle in a direction that is opposite the side on which is the obstacle is detected.
In the same sense, maybe you can have IR detectors that provide a voltage proportional to the target thermal IR signature. Any target that meets a certain voltage criteria (thermal IR signature) will be flown to and not away from as in obstacle avoidance. The only problem here is that the IR sensors are generally forward facing and will only see thermal objects that are within their field of view. However using a search pattern to scan an area might work just using forward facing sensors.
Regards,
TCIII ArduRover2 Developer
Great looking project!
When you say heat seeking drone, will the drone automatically be able to recognize hotspots and fly to them? Or is it just that the drone will be equipped with a thermal camera? I would like to hear more about the progress of this project!
Good luck
Aaron