It’s hard to combine drones and sports, unless, you’re thinking about shooting at drones as a target practice…
We, however, found another way – we created and staged a fully automatic drone performance, the drones pretended to be…… basketballs! The show, designed in association with the Interactive Lab and “PitCH Group,” was held during VTB United League All-Star Game in Saint Petersburg. For the first time in Russia, a 12-drone-choreography (exactly the size of the basketball team) was shown at the Yubileyny Sports Palace. Machines took to the air during the time-out between the third and the fourth quarter of the final of The All-Star Game and performed a four-minute dance.
Large drones were dressed in hand-made costumes, stylized to resemble basketballs. And not just any balls – specifically for The All-Star Game, Sibur and Wilson collaborated to create Eco-basketballs – the orange-and-blue balls made from recycled plastic. LED lights on drones’ costumes (diameter -23 inches) were glittering, matching the colors pallet of the balls.
Well, it wasn’t just glittering. It was more of the choreography of color, where different movements of the drones were complemented by certain colors. We designed electronics that allowed us to synchronize figures in flight with color arrangement. For this purpose, every drone was equipped with about 500 LED lights! The flight trajectory commands and the color pattern commands were both transmitted via the same channel, which resulted in total coherence between the two.

To achieve great precision in the “Yubileyny” choreography, we installed 16 infrared cameras that determined the location of each and every drone. The installation of the cameras in the enormous Palace of Sports was not an easy undertaking – we had to employ industrial alpinists.
And still, even when all the cameras were installed and set, the unanticipated challenge had emerged. Other presenters at the event, had their equipment installed as well (often, not in the places that were agreed upon) and that obscured the view for some of our cameras. That didn’t stop us, we quickly remounted some of the cameras and cleared their view.
We faced a particular challenge because nearly 10 thousand people have come to watch the game, majority of which had their cell phones on, and went online. Moreover, the “Match TV” channel was broadcasting live using tons of cameras. All of it together jammed our signal, making it impossible to use regular WIFI. Nevertheless, the special radio channel that we created to transmit the data solved the issue.

In the end, our drones had captivated audience no worse than best basketballers of Europe.
Anton Solomin, the famous basketball observer on“Match TV”Anton Solomin noted: “It was spectacular and even a bit scary! We’ve never been that close to the actual Rise of Machines. For the majority of the audience, the show turned out to be a real shocker. Nobody has ever witnessed anything quite like it.

For all collaboration and more information: http://tsuru.su ,https://www.instagram.com/tsuru_robotics/

The Graffiti Drone is a truly unique project by Tsuru Robotics, implemented in association with Interactive Lab. It was the world's first painter drone, with complete automatic control. Misha Most, the artist, drew on a computer - that prefigured drone's trajectory. After that, the drone painted the surfaces with spray paint.
In the last publication, we explained certain technical aspects of graffiti drone. This time we’ll talk about electronics.

The unique real-time location system was specifically designed for this project, with the help of which, the drone moved with incredible precision - up to 0,19 inches.

Cameras monitored machine's movement through LED markers that were fastened to it and transmitted the data on drone's location to our server.

The special software was written - a path planner, based on the Unity3D engine - software that programs, simulates, and then tells the drone where it is supposed to be at the given moment.

The server combined two types of data and transmitted it to drone. Then the drone would calculate the specific actions it would have to take to move to the designated spot. To transmit the data on the drone, we used a specific radio channel. A special circuit board was developed, that combined two radio modules: a standard WiFi and the other - that operated on the same frequency and ensured that the data for the real-time locating went uninterrupted.

Why not transmit the data via the regular WIFI? It doesn’t work that way – regular WIFI would cause arbitrary delays, which are unacceptable. We use regular WIFI to transmit the telemetry, where delays are not crucial.
So, the drone had received the data from the server. The word received, however, does not accurately reflect what happens. The data are sent to the drone 60 times per second – that’s why the delays are unacceptable. There’s a microcomputer on the drone, it’s called an autopilot, and it has a software, which, among other things, controls the drone automatically.

How does the control system operate? We should say up front, that even receiving external data 60 times per second - isn’t quite enough for it! To operate efficiently it needs more data, and it needs it more often. Luckily the system collects the data on its own, using the onboard sensors like –a gyroscope, a compass, an accelerometer (measures acceleration), and a pressure sensor (measures altitude). It collects the data 1000 times per second.

Having received the information from the sensors, the microcomputer combines it with the data from the server and determines its own location. It does that 1000 times per second!
But why isn’t it enough to have just one external real-time location system? The explanation comes from the American movies. Let’s imagine the police officer pulls you over, assuming that you are drunk. He then asks you to walk a straight line. You can see the line (the real-time location system works), but you keep staggering (the alcohol impairs your vestibular system) The outcome – you’ve been busted. Well, the onboard sensors are the vestibular system of the drone. You can imagine, by analogy, what would happen if these sensors were absent.

But let us come back to our “sober” drone. The software reconciles the current and the target position and then issues the command to the engines to move to the designated spot. Of course, it’s not that easy. Because in order to move from point A to point B, the drone has to perform a massive number of coordinated actions – to lean, to hit the gas, to move (while keeping the altitude), to hit the brakes without reaching the point, and to stop precisely at the point B. With all that, the software issues the commands 400 times per second.

And so, moving from point A to point B, the graffiti drone paints picture by picture. It paints completely on its own.

For all collaborations and more information http://tsuru.su  and https://www.instagram.com/tsuru_robotics/

Graffiti drone - a project by Tsuru Robotics, implemented in association with Interactive Lab, has become a truly unique undertaking. If only because, no one before us, had designed the painter drone, with complete automatic control. The demonstration of this wonder took place in the Winzavod Center of Contemporary Art, in Moscow. Misha Most, the artist, was drawing on a computer, which prefigured drone’s trajectory.

It looked natural and spectacular. But, the creation of the graffiti drone, itself, required ingenious technological solutions. Here’s one of them:
The drone paints with spray paint. The common spray paint that you can find at any hardware store. When using spray paint, one can prevent his hands from getting soiled by putting on the gloves. Otherwise, you’ll have to wash and scrub your hands after each painting session. But you wouldn’t bathe a drone, would you?
The first few trials of the flying painter showed that it’s not very tidy. The air flows, coming from propellers, were almost sucking the spray in, and it poured down on the machine, profusely.
Long story short, we needed to come up with a constructive solution. And we did. How do people protect themselves from the rain? Obviously – with an umbrella. We integrated the umbrella principle into our graffiti drone. The spraying system was shielded by a screen that resembled the umbrella, lying on its side. This screen, thanks to its concave shape, was collecting flying splatter of paint, thus protecting the mechanisms of the drone.
Propellers were, of course, getting soiled, you can't help that, but it stayed clean long enough. Graffiti drone was carrying out two kinds of painting tasks, it outlined the contour first and then filled it in. When painting, the propellers needed cleaning after emptying every second spray can, when painting outline, they were able to last much longer.
The workload that our drone had to keep up with was huge – we planned to fill a 100-foot wall with paintings! And a bumpy wall at that, as was discovered upon closer examination. The wall was assembled from the slabs some of which did not line up. Usually, it wouldn’t stand out, but it affected the quality of the painting. How did we go about it?
The drone was set to paint not over the entire wall, but only over some parts 9 to 13 feet wide. At this range, the bumpiness of the wall did not matter. As soon as the part was calibrated, the drone would get to work. Upon finishing the part, “the artist” would move to the next one, following the pattern.
As mentioned above, we used the common spray paint. But the caps had to be modified. It turned out that they come in many types. The difference lied in the width of spray. We chose different caps for different tasks. When outlining, we needed a much thinner line, when painting, we needed it thicker. We had to go through dozens of caps till we found what would fit the best.
Still, even the best paint spray with a perfectly functional cap would spray with a slight delay. It took a split-second for the paint to reach the canvas, and it also took some time for spraying to stop. That almost imperceptible time lag often prevented us from getting 100% of accuracy. We solved that too. The drone was programmed in such a way that, when necessary, it pushed (and also let go of) the cap a bit earlier. Thus, the spray hit the mark, flawlessly, without leaving empty spots, or spraying beyond the outline.
This is only a fraction of problems, that’s been solved during the production of our graffiti drone. You’ll find more puzzling quirks and interesting solutions for further publications.

For all collaboration and more information: http://tsuru.su ,https://www.instagram.com/tsuru_robotics/