Hello, my name is Rakshak and I wanted to share my project, the RAVN, which enables your drone to be easy to program and build autonomous applications for.
The reason we're developing the RAVN is because I found programming drones to be a far cry from the ease of programming computers. When you program a computer you have communities sharing plenty of existing code, support, and know-how.
If you program a drone using a popular flight controller such as a Pixhawk you'll find yourself swamped trying to program at a low level, using new tools with minimal support, and scattered resources.
Our platform on the other hand is designed to leverage existing code by installing a mini computer directly on your drone. This makes it easy for integrating existing computer vision scripts for environmental monitoring, easily adding any additional sensors, and continually upgrading the development experience.
If you are interested in building the future of drones and unleashing their potential in personal missions, robotics competitions, etc. Please click here for more information and reply below. I'm more than happy to answer any questions.
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The purpose of the RAVN is to support drone development by building a community, lowering the entry barrier, and providing a full made package.
Our goal is for anyone to be able to use any embedded linux computer, simply download our package, and begin developing on drones without hassle. We're initially going with the Raspberry Pi because of large community support, small form factor, and low cost. You're more than free to use a much more powerful board if you desire. Just simply install the RAVN software.
We're opening up the source code of the RAVN next week.
The RAVN has 2 parts. The client and the server.
The RAVN client is what you write. It's the API that makes drone flight control and data acquisition straightforward.
The RAVN server handles the client requests and is currently written in Python and built on top of DroneAPI and MAVProxy as a proof of concept. We're building our own C++ server as a drop in replacement. This will improve performance and allow multiple client scripts to run in parallel.
We're also planning on writing client libraries for other languages such as Node.js, Ruby, and C++. We will initially support Python.
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Comments
And I must add , +1 for the fact that you will provide this interface in other languages than python scripts.
Signed up. I'm particularly interested about the high level API/interfaces you will provide to be able to program data processing applications, without messing around with the low level droneapi or mavproxy laryers.
Thx!
RPi is cool but I am a strong believer in BeagleBone Black and its potentials. I wish if you have adopted it.
Anyways, best of luck guys! I have signed up!
Dries,
Yes we're improving our market outreach strategy before we launch again.
I'm glad to hear you're interested in trying it out, please fill out our form at http://ravn.raptorbird.com/ and let us know in the comments box that you want to test out our platform. We'll provide you with more details when we have a version ready.
Thank You!
Ludwig,
We originally looked to the BeagleBone but chose the RPi due to its larger community support. This makes the development process go over smoothly. You are more than free to use the hardware of your choice.
Nice project Rakshak! I see you also had a kickstarter, but this was cancelled? Would love to test it out on our fixed wing!
Great work! have you considered "BeagleBone" or other platforms as the companion computer?
Randy, Thank you! This is exactly where we're going with this.
It's really great see this. The flight code is more complicated (although better structured) than it was a couple of years ago and that can make it more difficult to get involved. Using a companion computer is a great way to do your development in an environment with lots of CPU power and where you can mess with the code without having to worry about it causing the flight controller board to crash.
Having this separation allows the high level development to go on while people like me spend more time on making the flight controller software as robust as possible. We can support the companion computer development by exposing whatever controls the companion computer developers say they need.
Be sure to sign up so we can post you on updates.
http://ravn.raptorbird.com/
Thanks
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