Learning becomes easier when we add a little bit of fun to it. Here using the idea of obstacle detection, rather than just implementing simple obstacle avoidance in the drones path, I thought of playing a game with it.
To understand basic ideas of IR sensors and detection, I thought of building a game based on this using a drone. In this game of table tennis we can replace the ball with a drone.There will be 2 IR sensors on either sides which will detect a TT racket in its range and will move in the opposite direction thus 2 players can easily play this game.
For this we require the RC roll to be OFF and for it to roll in the opposite direction by itself as given in the code. I have used PlutoX controller which has its own open source Cygnus IDE on which i implemented my code.
Heres how i did it
- FINALIZING COMPONENTS REQUIRED
- PlutoX
- PrimusX board
- 2 IR sensors(V53LOX)
- Breakout board
- 600 mAh batteries
- GETTING THE HARDWARE READY
- The IR sensor that i have integrated consists of 5 connections namely VCC,GND,RESET,I2C pins SCL,SDA
- Vcc is connected to BAT pin
- The breakout board provides I2c connections
- Pin 6 to SDA
- Pin 7 to SCL
- Pins 13 & 15 are the default pins for getting range from IR sensors using Xshield API which is connected to pin X on sensor module.
- GETTING THE SOFTWARE READY
- Breakout board gives the range from IR sensors
- If an obstacles is encountered within 150mm, the drone moves in the opposite direction
- Using IR sensors on both sides a drone can be used to play Table tennis
- gethub link: https://github.com/DronaAviation/PlutoX-Sample-Codes/tree/master/PlutoX-Shield(VL53LOX)
Comments
Silly ways to fly.... so many silly ways to fly!!
I like when fun is part of the job or the learning. This job of ours is one of the most fun in the World (I can be biased though ;-).
Keep us posted with new videos
Great work! Reminds me of Jose Julio's original demo of what became ArduPilot almost ten years ago (at 1:16 in the below):