Unveiling the robot

Here you are some photographs of my flying robot.


It's a chinese replica of the t rex 450 equipped with brushless motor and lipo battery.

As you can see, there's a CMUcam mounted in the front. It points the helicopter in the direction (yaw control) of a coloured object, and follows it when this ascends or descends, lowering and raising height.



The new arduPilot mega with IMU shield is mounted on the tail boom, near the body. Currently it works just as a stabilization unit with little code modifications. In the future, when I'll have some spare time, I'll adapt it as an autopilot with gps guide and indoor navigation techniques such as the Polly algorithm (CMUcam software) which recognizes wall edges.




The goal of this project is to demonstrate (or not!) that cheap electronics and models can lead to a "successful" and reliable robot, to use as a platform for sensors.


in particular, the major goals to achieve are:


-long flight time

-payload weight

-almost absolutely fail-safe hardware and software, reliability

-autonomous navigation


upgrades can be a controller such as the RoBoard, the roboRealm vision software and a camera



I'll post more as soon (long) as i have time to work



cheeeeeers

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Comments

  • Admin
    mine is this one to find out if it was good enough or not. Obviously not if you value some thing.
  • Which clone are you running exactly? I am looking for something to run my 2200mah 3s in.
  • If your up to programming, check out OpenCV. Great vision library, and very powerful with blob tracking, optical flow, and tons of other vision based stuff.
  • Moderator
    Agreed
  • Admin
    Yes Sgt , cable ties can be brutal to soft skin LiPo , so softer & better option would be Velcro wrap around batt straps that most heli guys are familiar with. It spreads the pressure evenly and holds batt more securely IMHO
  • Moderator
    I've heard enough horror stories about lipos with dents and grooves in them that I actually threw out (recycle bins) a battery that arrived from HongKong with a major dent in it (poor packaging).

    A cable tie is hard on a lipo.
    Any groove or dent can be catastrophic!
  • Admin
    LiPo + cable tie?! whats wrong with Velcro straps?
  • Looks exciting!!
    I would watch that Lipo cell on front though - don't want to pinch it too much with the cable tie. I learned this the hard way recently.
  • Admin
    "screw failures" are eternal problems with these clones.Loctite won't help IMHO. it is the metal quality problem My 500 clone did not survive even first power/spool up. The tail blade retainer bolts failed on the ground( lucky) in my case on the first attempt, all the screw hardware recommened to be changed/upgraded with original Align spares. Waiting. good luck
  • Hehe the object tracking is built-in in the Cmucam software, and yes, I did it volountarily, I wanted the heli to follow the object in a 2-doimensional plane. Next time I'll wire the throttle control to the CMU, hell yeah azz, heli yeah

    ciaociao
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