Randy is one of the key members of the ArduCopter team, and has been leading the traditional heli part of it, along with integrating optical flow sensors into the ArduCopter code (look for a product we may be offering in that space soon).
He's also a great example of the international nature of the team. If you thought Jani was pretty exotic, as a Finn living in Thailand, Randy is a Canadian living in Japan!
Name: Randy Mackay
Home base: I live in Tokyo Japan. It's always interesting as it's a very different culture (from mine) and although it can seem very similar to the west on the surface, the differences come to the surface all the time through unusual foods, people's reactions to events, and many other ways. One challenge though is finding open spaces to fly but where there's a will there's a way!
Day job: I make financial risk management software for a Swiss investment bank. Struggling to find a cross over with DIYDrones..nope, there isn't any.
DIY Drones Role: My primary responsibility is getting the Traditional Helicopter code up to the same level of performance as the Quad. Frankly, it's a real challenge. Although probably faster and more maneuverable than a quad, heli's are very unstable, control inputs affect more than one axis and when thing go wrong, repairs are expensive and time consuming. Still, it's lots of fun and we're getting there. Beyond the trad heli, I've added improvements here and there mostly in the magnetometer and sonar code.
I love being a member of the arduCopter team and working with the talented engineers that Chris has introduced in this series, it's just so much more effective than going it alone.
Background: My obsession with computers began with a TRS80 that my mother brought home and a book of Basic games that you had to type in yourself..and of course they were riddled with bugs which needed to be fixed before you could actually play them! Years later I received a BSc in Computer Science from McGill University.
I got into RC cars with my best friend from elementary school, and then much later RC Helicopters.
The combination of the two passions, programming with RC was natural step as i suspect it was for many others DIYDroners. Specifically Jack Crossfire and his vicacopter was the catalysts that made me jump in.
Other interests: I'm very interested in optical flow and the possibility of using it for improved position control, altitude and object avoidance. I'd also like to find an alternative to the current sonar and barometer sensors for altitude hold - perhaps a laser range finder? Also keen on 3D printed parts.
Comments
@Jiro - dropped you a PM. It'd be fantastic to get together some people in Tokyo with this same offbeat hobby
@malcolm, thanks a lot for the testing and tuning you've been doing, it's really helping. Yes, I think the optical flow sensor could be even more useful on the heli than on the quad.
@Paul - it's true the TRS80 was used when I got my hands on it but I think it was around 1980. I was promised a new computer when I could fill all of the 16k RAM it had. took a while to figure out that could be done with a single declaration which was probably the point!
Me, Randy, Tridge & Michael.O are the guys from the Future. We have our weekly meetings on Modays while Chris and others who usually initiate these conference meetings are still on Sunday. This is another example of how international group we have.
It also creates challenges to whole teams as because we have people almost on every possible timezones. Worst hits goes to Sandro and Max as our meetings times are about middle of night for them.
Btw, Finns and Canucs have many other things common too :)
Hi Randy. I'm a mechanical engineer in Tokyo area and native Japanese. We may already have some encountering opportunity at Akihabara :)
A Trash 80? You can't be that old, or it was already an antique when you got it! Anyway, thanks for the contribution to the effort. I have enjoyed reading these profiles.
Randy is the Doctor from Star Trek Voyager so playing around heli control subroutines is a game for him :)
Looking forward to the optical flow sensor.
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