Great to see the progress of the Erle Robotics team, who have ported the APM code to Ubuntu and interfaced with ROS to make a great research platform. From the Ubuntu blog:
Erle-Copter: the first drone with apps powered by Ubuntu Core
Over the last months and with the support of Canonical, Erle Robotics engineers have been working hard to bring the first drone with apps to the market. Last week Erle Robotics introduced Erle-Copter Ubuntu Core special edition, a smart drone powered by Snappy Ubuntu Core that will stay secure automatically and can be upgraded with additional capabilities from the app store.
With Erle-Copter’s Ubuntu edition one can install drone apps (behaviors) using any device with a browser connected to the drone. Programming drone apps is done through the Robot Operating System (ROS).
“In a few years ROS has changed the robotics field. It has unified Universities and industry around the world, enhanced collaboration, sharing of algorithms and reuse of code. A task that traditionally could take months can be developed within days using ROS. We are true believers of this framework and its possibilities for the future of robotics thereby adopting it as an SDK for robot and drone app development is the right choice for us.” – Víctor Mayoral Vilches, CTO of Erle Robotics.
The Robot Operating System will delivered in Snappy as installable framework for Erle Robotics drones and robots. Developers will be able to build applications using ROS and put their algorithms in the app store.
Erle Robotics open platform aims to attract innovators and experts to collaborate and compete with open drones and robots for education, research and invention. The drone will be shown at IoT World during this week.
Comments
We've been able to lift payloads over 2kg actually with 4S batteries. And yes, it has 3 IMUs: MPU6000, MPU9250 and LSM9D.
Regards,
Nice one and very tempting !
The payload "Up to 2 kg" is not a bit optimistic for a 0.8 kg bird ?
really have 3 redundant IMUs ?
Pascal
Hi Gary,
Yes, It is. It has Erle-Brain v1.1 with a Snappy Ubuntu Core file system.
We are supporters of APM and ROS and both come preinstalled and ready to work together on this Snappy release. Furthermore we've got an ongoing project to integrate APM and ROS even more.
Cheers,
Great copter guys,
An excellent way to get your autopilot into more peoples hands for ROS development and at $399.00 Euros it is a bargain for an ARF of this caliber.
Is this the exact same hardware as your normal Erle brain?
Or can either copter be used for either or both APM and ROS.
If not, what are the main hardware differences?
Best regards,
Gary