Lew Payne's Posts (9)

Sort by

New Commercial Quad-Copter Available

Posted by Lew Payne on May 17, 2011 at 8:46am
tialinx-phoenix50-h-uav-lg.jpg

TiaLinx has announced the launch of the Phoenix50-H. The quad coaxial mini-copter system is capable of performing multiple functions such as detecting movement or breathing of a hiding person in a compound from a sloped roof. The mini-copter can be remotely controlled at extended standoff distances of more than multiples of 100 feet from ground or an airborne asset to keep the operators out of harm's way.The lightweight and agile mini-copter with programmability to fly to or land at multiple waypoints has been integrated with TiaLinx's fine beam ultra-wideband (UWB), multi-Gigahertz radio frequency (RF) sensor array.An onboard microphone and video camera augment the sensor capability of Phoenix50-H. TiaLinx's advanced real-time and light weight UWB RF imaging system was an essential step in the development of Phoenix50-H to operate at high elevations for prolonged missions. The transmitted power of the UWB signal is less than a typical cellular phone.Read all about it in Space War online.
Read more…

  Back in 1979, there was Newton... the land drone and faithful companion!  Invented by Steve Hodges, a serial entrepeneur here in Boise, Idaho (where I live).  Steve just recently sold M2M, an irriga

Posted by Lew Payne on January 27, 2011 at 8:06am

ab404d.JPG

cd219b.JPG 

Back in 1979, there was Newton... the land drone and faithful companion!  Invented by Steve Hodges, a serial entrepeneur here in Boise, Idaho (where I live).  Steve just recently sold M2M, an irrigation communications company for $33.3 Mil.

 

Now all we need to do is get him interested in flying robots!

 

Check out the youtube video of Newton from 1979... it's super cheesy yet admittedly ahead of its time!

Read more…

STMicro Cortex-M4 Samples Coming Out!

Posted by Lew Payne on November 30, 2010 at 3:28pm

2010-11-30_crh_STMicroelectronics_CortexMCUs.jpg


STMicro has done it again... this time readying their ARM Cortex-M4 MCU (with hardware floating-point, DSP instructions and compatibility with Cortex-M3) for production in early 2011. In addition, they're also expanding into the F-2 series, which features an adaptive real-time memory accelerator to achieve a performance of 150 Dhrystone MIPS when executing code from flash at 120MHz (the maximum possible for the Cortex core).

All the above devices will remain software and pin-compatible!

Now it will be possible to upgrade the CPU on some existing IMU/AHRS/MARG/INS designs, so that a true Kalman filter can be implemented with floating-point support!

Click here if you want to read the full press release.
Read more…

Drone Fish (AUV fish) Lead Real Fish to Safety

Posted by Lew Payne on June 8, 2010 at 11:00pm

Robot-Fish.jpg

Robot fish take over schools, lead real fish to safety
Popular Science (1/6/10) Boyle, Rebecca

A New York University researcher is building a series of robotic fish that could enter into a school of real fish and take over their maneuvers. It could herd the fish away from dangers, such as underwater turbines. The research the leader fish robot is based on determined that the fish in the school that beats its tail fastest is the one that gets the attention of a school.


No word yet on which IMU or Kalman filter they've chosen.


Full story here.

Read more…

Self-Stabilizing Servo

Posted by Lew Payne on May 6, 2010 at 1:00pm
Speaking of servos (the topic of my prior post), the GS-1 gyro server self-stabilizes (in one axis only)...

gs1.jpg



I'm curious... has anyone used a pair of these to construct a self-stabilizing pan/tilt gimbal for their aerial shots (plane or copter)? It would certainly make for less parts and wiring, being that servos will still be required to do the job (so why not cram the gyro in the servo and kill two birds with one stone). I'd really like to research a good looking and sturdy gimbal ball turret for my particular design (Sony FCB-EX1000 block camera with 432x zoom, and FLIR PathFindIR). I've scoured the net and, short of commercial systems, was not sufficiently impressed. Ideas are welcome!
Read more…

Servo Conversion - I2C Control

Posted by Lew Payne on May 6, 2010 at 12:30pm

FrontPage?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=openservo.jpg



In various groups and blogs I peruse on here, there's been talk about I2C control of servos (as opposed to standard PWM). This certainly solves several problems, as it allows one I/O port (I2C) to service over a hundred servos with ease. With some built-in intelligence, the servo itself can take care of interpreting and following commands without the need for continual updates from the system (i.e., true asynchronous operation). In addition, servo power lines are kept separate from the autopilot board, thus eliminating the possibility of overheating board traces due to excessive current draw (a stack of 8 servos, especially digital ones, can easily exceed the amperage rating of the traces and wiring used in some autopilot boards). The one drawback to I2C control... if one servo's electronics fails and "latches" the bus, the entire network is toast. However, that possibility can be mitigated through an isolation network built onto the servo control board.

Coincidentally, today I read a message on the UAV Dev Group about an open source servo project called (not surprisingly) OpenServo*. Among other things, they offer complete ready-to-go boards that fit inside some standard servos and convert them to I2C. Here's a list of features, directly from their page:

  • High performance AVR 8-bit microcontroller
  • Compact H-Bridge with high performance MOSFETs
  • Precision control over servo position and speed
  • I2C/TWI based interface for control and feedback
  • Feedback of position, speed, voltage and power
  • Advanced curve based motion profile support
  • EEPROM storage of servo configuration information
  • Software written in C using free development tools
  • I2C/TWI bootloader and GUI programmer

I thought I'd mention it here, since there seem to be people from several diverse groups interested in this (I2C servo control). Price is $14.95 from SparkFun Electronics.

*Credit to Peter Holands of UAV Dev Group for spotting this.
Read more…

STMicro IMU Development Platform

Posted by Lew Payne on May 2, 2010 at 10:00am
I'm partial to the STM32 (ARM CORTEX-M3 based uController) line of uControllers, not only for their hardware mul/div instructions, but also for their ability to have the ADC converter continually scanning and pushing to memory its conversion results from a series of analog devices.

Now, it looks like STMicro has a gamer development board, complete with five ST sensors – a 2-axis roll-and-pitch gyroscope (LPR430AL), a single-axis yaw[3] gyroscope (LY330ALH), a 6-axis geomagnetic module (LSM303DLH),a pressure sensor (LPS001DL) and a temperature sensor (STLM75). All the sensors and the AHRS algorithm are managed by an on-board STM32 microcontroller. The module, which comprises a 4x4cm evaluation board and all the necessary firmware and software, will be available for volume orders in Q2 2010.

It also runs a sophisticated sensor fusion algorithm(Attitude Heading Reference System) to provide static and dynamic orientation and inertial measurements.

Here's the iNEMO board page. Yum!

image_steval-mki062v2.jpg


Read more…