We finally have a progress report on the integration of the IR-LOCK (Infrared Pixy) vision sensor with Pixhawk. A group of students at the Georgia Institute of Technology is using the sensor for their 'Package Delivery Drone', which requires precision landings. They plan to use GPS to travel to a waypoint, and then use the IR-LOCK sensor to land precisely on an infrared beacon. Recently, they were able to get an IRIS+IR-LOCK to auto-hover over an IR beacon (see videos).
Other applications for IR-LOCK/Pixhawk are in the works (or at least in mind):
- Search&Rescue (auto-search for emergency IR beacons)
- Moving target following
- Aerial surveying (I will be able to post a relevant video soon)
- ... your thoughts/ideas are welcome :)
We are in the process of making the IR-LOCK/Pixhawk interface more developer-friendly. The current developments (by the student group) are based on an IR-LOCK sensor 'driver' and codebase discussed on this FAQ page (link). A 'more official' implementation should be under development soon. The relevant discussion is here (link).
Small IR 'Pods' can be detected by the IR-LOCK sensor at about ~30-60ft. The IR-LOCK sensor reports the (xy) position of IR targets to Pixhawk at 50Hz.
Comments
Can you share with me the source code for this ir-lock sensor for pixy camera and pixhawk... I have some course work need to be done using this both hardware.. I hope you can help me.
Thank you in advance.
Just seen it - Very cool :)
@Crispin
The latest video and info is over here:
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/precision-landing-w-pixhawk-qua...
Crispin, I'm sure the final solution will be for high speed CPUs only (including the pixhawk). Plane and rover continue to support APM1,2 for the moment at least.
top news chaps. As always, I am happy to run tests on one of my quads. It's a crash-test quad held together with nylon screws so not fussed about it going belly-up. All part of the fun.
I assume this will only run on pixhawk? I have a number of spare 2.6s but no spare Pixhawk. Always an excuse to get another one though :)
@Crispin
Testing is going well. We recently performed fully-automated missions with multiple precision landings (via Mission Planner). We also landed on cars, tables, etc. :) ... The code needs more work/inspection before it can be officially implemented in the firmware, but the proof-of-concept is looking great.
Hopefully, you will see some of our new video footage very soon. Perhaps, it will deserve a new blog post.
Best,
Thomas
I've done some work to put it into a form that would support both this IR-Lock landing and Daniel Nugent's companion computer method but my test flight wasn't successful. I'm pretty sure the problem was related to a bug (probably my bug) in the code to communicate with the IR-Lock. So work continues!
hey chaps - any update on this?
:)
I'm with Dylan on this - we need to keep him fed and watered and protected from outsiders...
Results are awesome!
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