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
Comments
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.
ciaociao
Angelo
Updates from the under-ground: Fly day one.
-Yaw values flutter and come back to a certain value, making the heli scarily rotating. used the CMUcam object tracking feature to get a steadier hover. Used a red ball.
-Servo corrections needed.
-Screws failure. Need more loctite.
-ESC getting fooking hot, surrounding rubber damaged. The hotplate has now been upwarded to the air-flow of the rotor.
GOOD THINGS
-fast IMU response
-mountings and brackets work goooood
-lots of power with a 4000 mAh lipo
-cmucam's simple vision capabilities are rocking
-BUT, manual control on motor speed and throttle
NEXT TIME:
-Hover, Endurance test.
-Without tx/rx
ciao
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next