Google Trends for tower hobbies vs. hobbyking
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We want you to build a robot that completes a trivial task in the most inefficient and laborious way possible. Oh yeah, it needs to destroy itself doing so. Intrigued? We thought so!
Any suggestions on what the most trivial task a UAV could perform in a laborious way is! As I demonstrated at Sparkfun's AVC this year getting a AUV to destroy itself is a simple task - LOL.
A research group from Czechoslovakia has been doing some nice work with ground-based guidance of the Parrot AR.Drone using image processing. From their video description: "This video demonstrates the ability of the AR drone to takeoff and land on a moving vehicle. The ARDrone bottom camera is used to recognize a simple pattern on the moving robot and the drone either howers above or lands on the pattern.
"This video shows a fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle following a short pre-learned path. The quadcopter is first manually guided around by a teleoperator. During the teleoperated flight, image processing algorithms (SURF,SIFT) recognize salient objects from the image of the on-board camera.
Positions of these objects are estimated and put in a threedimensional map.
In the autonomous mode, the quadcopter loads a relevant map and matches the mapped objects to the currently visible ones. In this way, the quadcopter is able to estimate it position with a precision higher than conventional GPS."
(via I Heart Robotics)
Most of the review for it are five-stars, also !
So the MRF49XA we've battled finally got an upgrade. It's the MRF89XA &
it has a 32x bigger FIFO, hardware packetizing, hardware CRC, & now
requires a 12.8Mhz crystal so throw away all your 10Mhz crystals.
Work slowly resumes on neural networks for Marcy 1. This time, just settling for
feedforward prediction of navigation points. Have no confidence in it.
Once again, the problem with any completely artificial intelligence
feedback controller is computing the long term offset.
Now that we're optimizing CPU usage for neural networks again,
discovered if the sonar period is too long, it causes the audio
processing to exceed the cache & slow it way down.
The Aiptek P-HD got its 1st ground video of a difficult takeoff to
400ft & landing. Landing on the narrow slit between the weeds still
takes manual control. Extremely high wind caused pretty crazy navigation
errors on the takeoff.
Kept making demo videos in case someone ever read our resume. Standard
autonomous operations with VicaCopter in HD & very windy conditions.
Autonomous takeoffs, ascents, landings, hovers. Marcy maneuver didn't
work very well on that 400ft descent because of the wind.
The problem with wind is the high angle of attack causes GPS to lose
satellites. She dropped to 7 satellites at 400ft.
Finally, have some more sky writing. The star trails of Scorpio are deliberately visible in the background. It was always conspicuous in all our years of flying. Used to think it was a sickle marking death to anyone who ventured to the center of the galaxy.
The smile inducing technology really killed us in this shot.
So many diydroners are unemployed, it's time to start a group.
We shot a video on this morning. The platform was a depron PolyClub, weather was perfect for this light airplane.
We have 2 camera on the plane, one of camera on tail, other one on right side of plane(45 degree angled to the ground) Side camera perspective is unbelivable and i'm strongly suggesting to watch all video :)
Have a nice weekend :)
Melih
Price: US$ 99.00 (and maybe lower after logging in on the Hobbyking website or if you are a premium member).
For details: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=11656
Making boards of the complexity of the ArduPilot IMU shield takes more than a pick & place machine. It also requires a test jig to verify that every board is working before it's shipped out. Here's a board from the first batch being tested. Those pins inbetween the two red boards are called pogo pins, and they're spring loaded, allowing us to just press the new board on the top to make an electrical connection.
Here's a shot from the side. The board in the middle is running the test code:
This is the one Sparkfun uses for the ArduPilot Mega main board, which they gave us so we could make our own main boards, too. Sparkfun makes the best test jigs and they've taught us a lot. Yay Sparkfun!
The final product! ArduPilot Mega IMU shields getting ready to be shipped out--is there anything more beautiful?
This is the first video of stable mode doing by FoxTeam member Riccardo F.
In this version of software we have this kind of configuration :
Two multiboard :
1 Magnetometer
1 GPS
1 Sonar
1 Barometer (not yet used).
4 IR-Sensor (not yet used).
1) Multiboard need for stability on it there are the our version of Arduimu Quad III ( pre alpha Arducopter firmware). On this board is connected acc , gyro , Sonar ,magnetometer , Barometer and 2° Multiboard.
2) Multiboard / Ardumega have GPS , Rx Radio , IR-Sensor : the software that we intend to mount is an a revision of ardupilot rewritten for Multicopter.
In this code is supported :
- Mixertable , in the video configuration is used a X4 , but I'm testing also X6 Radial.
- I2c Bl-CTR
- Rx-Radio that use a serial protocol . In future application will be possible use directly Xbeepro to recive from pc o iphone the fly command .. :)
- Rewrite a code for YAW control.
In this video is possible to see the first release of JavaGS (Ground Station)
http://code.google.com/p/lnmultipilot10/source/browse/#svn/branches/riky/ProjectFB-GS
Our target of next weeks will be GPS Position hold , and autotake off and landing.
The link of our repository is :
http://code.google.com/p/lnmultipilot10/source/browse/#svn/branches/
ricky and redfox74 branch.
This is our update :
http://code.google.com/p/lnmultipilot10/updates/list
We need help to implement and develop the code , if someone would join to our development or need more information can contact me !
Regards
Fox Team
Roberto N. & Riccardo F. :)
A glimmer of hope for those of you that live in that country with old fashioned rules, the FAA now have a brace of Scaneagles to play with.
Hi all,
ok.. it was my fault. I usually buy online, I usually pay immediatly (because i'm an honest guy) and I wait for my items.
This time happens to me, probably the first time, to realize i've bought wrong items.
I would like to build my first quadcopter and Arducopter project is interesting.. but Arducopter project is at the first, alpha, stage. So.. probably not a good project, not a tested software for my purpose.
Probably not tested hardware ... will I be surprised if a new version will be released soon, after first delivery ?
After understood that, i said "Ok.. no problem.. OilPan shield is in pre-order". So.. probably i can ask to cancel my order, because items are not available yet and it's impossible they already ship them.
After 2 days I've sent an email to ask to cancel my order. Answer is :
"Once orders have been payed for they cannot be canceled. This is specified under the payment information when you check out to place you order"
That's all!
Fine.. No itemes available (pre-order), but no money back. I can not cancel my order. I could agree to pay, i don't know, we can say ...10% of cost, as "Order Management fee". No.. it's not possible.
Unfriendly.
This is just a warning for buyers : read carefully "Term & Conditions" before buy anything !!
It's not a school test : here you can not do a mistake !
What happens now ? Ok.. i will wait for OilPain.. and i will not buy at this store anymore.
NardS
here is my project : an autonomous in thermal drone.
No motor, able to use the only thermal energy to climb.
I started this project 2 month ago, I did the first glider prototype and pod:
And did my first try with non-autonomous flight :
and
http://www.vimeo.com/11080324
Now the pod has cam and 2.4ghz emitter and I finished my interface computer->DX6i in order to drive everything...
next to come.
;)
for my first post here is what I've done :
I changed the code of the Sparkfun UBW project :
I added a new function (PP) that put the ubw in PPM mode drived by simple serial command over USB.
this way I'm able to drive the servo using a joystick like PCTx do.
;)
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| Popular Science (1/6/10) Boyle, Rebecca |
A New York University researcher is building a series of robotic fish that could enter into a school of real fish and take over their maneuvers. It could herd the fish away from dangers, such as underwater turbines. The research the leader fish robot is based on determined that the fish in the school that beats its tail fastest is the one that gets the attention of a school.
No word yet on which IMU or Kalman filter they've chosen.
Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4g... and to my ears, he was really announcing not the latest phone from apple, but the "iDrone". As I heard him talk about the new gyro built into the phone... I started adding the feature set... a fast CPU, lots of memory, built in GPS, compass, accelerometer and now a gyro... of course it could pilot a UAV!
With the built in cameras, it could do photo and video recon... and since it has two cameras (provided they can both be made to operate at the same time), add a couple of mirrors and the craft could do 3D images in real time... to assist in terrain mapping or landing.
It sports a good set of software development tools and on the whole, probably weighs less than all of the same components placed together, and at only $200 it's ecoconomical.
This is a project that could really get off the ground!
Hello all, I've been toying around with the MikroKopter Hexakopter as a tool for aerial mapping and photogrammetry. After a few weeks of learning the ins and outs of the system, I finally had some time on the weekend to test the system for mapping.
In short, we placed Ground Control Points (GCPs) around a man-made ponding area at roughly ten meter intervals (~40 x 30 m in total area). The GCPs were shot in with a deferentially-corrected GPS (~0.1 m horizontal and ~0.2m vertical resolution) and with a Total Data Station (>0.03m vertical and horizontal resolution). We then flew the Hexakopter at 40m above the ground surface in an east-west grid pattern with a photograph being taken straight down every 10 m or so. The camera used was an off the self Canon A540.
The photographs were processed to remove most distortion and dropped into a photogrammetry program. A 0.05 m resolution DEM and 0.02 m photomosaic was created from 22 images. It took about two hours to collect the photographs, and shoot in the GCPs with both the DGPS and TDS. Processing of the imagery was nearly flawless and took about two hours as well. This time can probably be reduced to an hour or less.
Compared to doing this same process with a kite or blimp, I am very impressed with the Mikrokopter (and multi-copters in general) as a platform for high resolution, low altitude mapping. Let me know what you think.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be testing the same process in at a couple of archaeological sites in the southwestern US. I'll share some of those results when they are complete.
Can't wait to play with the truly opensource Ardupilot!
-Mark
Jordi now has a cool new pick-and-place machine, which will let us massively increase our production of boards. This video shows the first ArduPilot Mega IMU shields coming off the production line! Shipments went out to the dev team today, and pre-order customers should start getting theirs later this week.
From the product listing (I've pinged them for more info and a price):
"Clairvoyance" UAV is an small electrically powered UAV and it is to be used in Short-range surveillance.It plays an important role in reconnaissance and aerial photography equipped with Webcam,digital camera and microwave devices. It is compact, lightweight, and it is also easy to operate and maintain. During flight operation, it can fly according to the scheduled routes and the adjustable waypoints.Data and images can be transmitted at the same time.Horizontal resolution of the Webcam :420 TV lines. Effective Communication Distance :20km. It is a tactical reconnanissance UAV with national advanced level which recently launched by our company.
wingspan: 1100mm
Body length: 900mm
Load: 200g
Take-off gross weight: 2200g
maximum thrust:1350g
Cruising speed: 40-60km/h
flying height: 20-2000m
Endurance: 20-50min
Maximum wind: 4
Landing: hand rolls"
