Started a little pet project as I further develop a flight system that we can use on all of my crafts. This was going to include a uniform setup for several pieces that made the system work for me. I wanted to include a head tracker,as I started getting into this I remembered a episode that I liked very much on Top Gear, yes I am a gear-head also. So as I thought more about it,a nd as I get this setup consistent across the fleet this would be a good time to question how to set that up.
The episode had evolution of controls for the automobile and started to think about some of the ways we control quads, How they are controlled, what those controls were derived from and if improvement could be made because so many features that drones especially multicopters can do never really existed, especially not when the first RC controller was made. yes they are functional, however anyone who has flown with lots of options probably can relate to feeling like their are allot of controls to think about.
This made me think, I know that is not a thing that a human cannot do without tools but if I were to fly, what would be the most intuitive interface? I am not going to digress and list all the things I looked at in doing the research as some are very obscure. For example a Anime series I watched with my son called Sword Art Online or SAO. this really got into what it would be to fly in a virtual environment and how it would be controlled as intuitively as possible.
I quickly felt that if I wanted to use a head tracker that allows for 3 axis input I felt that that would be better for my flight control, while throttle could be be controlled by gestured movements. We have participated in several different development programs using Vibromyology (the study on muscles and the vibrations they make when the synapse fires). One unit we have in the lab is by Sonostics, they have a product called Myowave, and it can tell me how much force the muscle is giving in contrast to how are you try to use the muscle. Another product the Myo Arm band from a company named Thamic labs(no relation to Sonostics, Myowave), we are involved as a third party developer and as you watch the video below:
it is easy to see now how this "Superman" mode could be used. Then I felt that if we use a eye tracker this could then be used if you have a Gimbal or pan tilt on board for the cam to look around.
So my next steps:
As we continue to develop our solution for OSD and a hybrid Analog/Digital FPV that is better integrated into the on-board flight controller, stream line the tx/rx bands used to send all the information back and forth I will be taking my own deviation on this "Superman" Flight mode.
As progress is made I will be sure to post the updates.
before someone comments and says something about it, yes I have seen the video below, but I want to fly like superman, I could careless if my craft looks like him...
Comments
Still hard charging ahead on this, my son who is 7 has been my toughest critic... It seems much of the head movement has to be filtered out so that what seems natural also seems natural when one flies. After allot of thought and trials that have worked somewhat we are now using the actually flexor of the muscles the move the head for control rather than the headtracker... We are attempting to do this also with the eye movement, and as of now feel it is a better solution. Still testing, and encouraged when my son said "This can be really cool" ... He is pretty hard to impress
The Oculus is something the Thalmic has been using, I have not gone that route as I felt that the expense and size of the rift just makes it to bulky. In a perfect solution and to think like my son, it has to be set up easy, while providing a very engaging experience.
Hi Tearig,
Excellent considerations for increasing the immersive feel and response of the flight experience.
The problem with using eye tracking in an Oculus rift is you still have a quite limited physical field of view so straight ahead view is possibly generally better.
Using head tilt (already in Oculus) maybe or possibly EEG band for something a bit more interesting:
http://www.choosemuse.com/
I know The US Air Force has at least experimented with EEG type control.
In any case very interested to see your results.
Best Regards,
Gary
Randy, it will be Adrucopter and I very much want to contribute. I have several FC running differnt versions of the code and think it is possible. For hardware it will be a Pixhawk or a VR brain to start. During the conference I caught part when I should have been listing to a conference call that the PIxhawk can work a dual GPS location data from the ground station ... Looking to develop that into the system also, Ben thanks for the support and I welcome all the comments
good job
Noble goal, best of luck.
Not sure if you're doing your own controller or using ArduCopter/ArduPlane but at least in ArduCopter we're planning in the next year to greatly improve the flight controller's ability to accept instructions in a wider variety of formats. So AC3.2 includes the ability to accept velocity requests (i.e. a 3d vector of velocities) but there should be more coming and they'll all be accessible through MAVLink so if you can set-up a serial connection to AC you should be more easily able to tell it what you want. Anyway, sorry if I'm getting off topic, just suggesting something that may help.