When you love drones as well as rovers you would want to have both of them together. Just by adding a set of wheels to my already existing PlutoX drone and with the help of some simple coding, I developed this hybrid drone.

What I wanted to do was to build a prototype that can fly and walk on the ground as well so in short a combination of drone and rover. That is when I decided to make my project using PlutoX controller which controls a drone and it also has an add on breakout board which i used to add extra functionalities like rover mode.

Due to small wheels it becomes difficult to keep the heading of the in straight direction for this I have used something called as AutoStabilization. AutoStabilization uses the drones magnetometer data and keeps the heading straight. Heading can only be changed using the phone(Controller).

Here's how i did it

• FINALIZING COMPONENTS REQUIRED

  • PlutoX
  • 3D printed wheels and motor support
  • 400 rpm brushed motors
  • 600 mAh batteries
• GETTING THE HARDWARE READY

          In this project I decided to use PlutoX drone due to it’s hardware modularity. Adding most structure is               easier. For my project I needed something that will hold the wheels so that I can use my drone as rover.

          Using this wheel support I can easily clip the motors for rover onto the frame

• GETTING THE SOFTWARE READY

  • If the PlutoX is DISARMED (i.e in the Rover mode)

  • Check if it is Auto-Stabilized or not (AutoStablization helps the rover to maintain the direction with the help of Magnetometer )
  • If it is Auto-Stabilized, indicate by turning on the Left LED, get the heading from Yaw angle.
  • If not Auto-Stabilized, indicate by turning on the Right LED
  • Get the RC input and perform error correction(Error correction - only if Auto-Stabilized)
  • Set the direction and PWM input for motor M2 and M3
  • Motor Direction

  • Forward - M2 and M3 both forward
  • Reverse  - M2 and M3 both reverse
  • Right - M2 forward, M3 reverse
  • Left - M2 reverse, M3 forward

  • If the PlutoX is Armed it operates in Drone mode
  • Github link

  Auto-Stabilization - Using smaller wheels in rover mode sometimes becomes a disadvantage as it gets difficult for the drone to move in a straight line/forward direction.

  Auto-Stabilization uses the data from drones magnetometer and gets the yaw angle. Using this we can move the rover in straight line.

Learning becomes easier when we add a little bit of fun to it. Here using the idea of obstacle detection, rather than just implementing simple obstacle avoidance in the drones path, I thought of playing a game with it.

To understand basic ideas of IR sensors and detection, I thought of building a game based on this using a drone. In this game of table tennis we can replace the ball with a drone.There will be 2 IR sensors on either sides which will detect a TT racket in its range and will move in the opposite direction thus 2 players can easily play this game.

For this we require the RC roll to be OFF and for it to roll in the opposite direction by itself as given in the code. I have used PlutoX controller which has its own open source Cygnus IDE on which i implemented my code.

Heres how i did it

• FINALIZING COMPONENTS REQUIRED
  • PlutoX
  • PrimusX board
  • 2 IR sensors(V53LOX)
  • Breakout board
  • 600 mAh batteries
• GETTING THE HARDWARE READY
  • The IR sensor that i have integrated consists of 5 connections namely VCC,GND,RESET,I2C pins SCL,SDA
  • Vcc is connected to BAT pin
  • The breakout board provides I2c connections
  • Pin 6 to SDA
  • Pin 7 to SCL
  • Pins 13 & 15 are the default pins for getting range from IR sensors using Xshield API which is connected to pin X on sensor module.
• GETTING THE SOFTWARE READY
  • Breakout board gives the range from IR sensors
  • If an obstacles is encountered within 150mm, the drone moves in the opposite direction
  • Using IR sensors on both sides a drone can be used to play Table tennis
  • gethub link: https://github.com/DronaAviation/PlutoX-Sample-Codes/tree/master/PlutoX-Shield(VL53LOX)