after much thought, i'm copping out of creating a UAV with video tracking.now the plan is to mount a decent video camera in a controlled environment in order to track infrared signals.blimps will have IR emitters on top, emitting some sort of modulated signal. with some fourier transform and the computing power of my mac, i can then locate and identify a given number of blimps in view.i'm trying to identify true (x,y,z) position of each blimp. i'm thinking of using some sort of pattern recognition (with led's set up in a simple pattern with set dimensions on top of each blimp) or i may just cheat and stick an ultrasound sensor on the bottom of each blimp. this would not be that good since any ground interruptions, like people, will greatly mess with the data. theres a bit to be ironed out of this scheme.anyway, the idea is that the blimps will be cheap (fast and out of control) and the computer is the brains, telling each blimp what to do. this way, i can get the computing power behind the video tracking. as of now i'm thinking of using JMyron in processing, since its easy to use, should be suitable, and i don't know Max/Jitter. I fear not being able to get enough data to have accurate fourier transforms (leakage, aliasing...?). the max fps of jmyron has me on edge.communication between comp. and arduino will use Xbee.been thinking of choreographing movement of blimps in a number of ways. ie: calculate thrust vector based off (x,y,z) and then blimps react accordingly. just a thought. could use some nice E&M potential fields as models.this is all one big changing thought. i just like the idea since it incorporates quite a bit and will provide a lot of new ideas to learn.
2 stepper motors, and gear system may do the trick. If you don't have an altimeter, now is the itme to use it
When it hits the waypoint to start looking, if you know where to look, its really a simple bit of trig to figure out the orientation and the angle the camera needs to be (as long as you have the height). that is where the stepper motor comes in with ther gear system. After you have the location, just keep pinging your GPS, and reapplying the equation. It will give you pretty good tracking on a single GPS location.
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When it hits the waypoint to start looking, if you know where to look, its really a simple bit of trig to figure out the orientation and the angle the camera needs to be (as long as you have the height). that is where the stepper motor comes in with ther gear system. After you have the location, just keep pinging your GPS, and reapplying the equation. It will give you pretty good tracking on a single GPS location.