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3D Robotics

Taking Lego Mindstorms from toy to serious UAV platform

Posted by Chris Anderson on April 4, 2008 at 12:30pm

[UPDATE: after legal advice from LEGO, LatteBox has now changed its case design to remove the LEGO Technics holes, which you can see in these pictures. The new case is shown at the bottom of this post.] What got me into this whole UAV thing a couple years ago was the crazy idea that I could combine my love of LEGO Mindstorms robotics with my interest in RC planes. And thus was born the first Lego UAV. But to be honest it's a bit a kludge, given the constraints of the huge Mindstorms motors, and the gearing apparatus I needed to get it to drive just one control surface, the rudder. (Everything else is controlled by the off-the-shelf FMA Co-Pilot). That's a shame, because the Mindstorms NXT CPU module is a very capable ARM7 processor with Bluetooth, I2C ports, a display screen and a great set of programming tools, ranging from RobotC to LabView. And the available sensors include everything you'd need for a proper UAV, from 3-axis accelerometers to gyros, compasses, even pressure sensors. The only barrier to it being a real-world robotics platform is the motors, which basically only make sense in a Lego context. If only there were a way for NXT to drive regular RC servos.... Now there is. This week I received the new Lattebox NXT servo controller, which was first discussed here on DIYDrones a few weeks ago. It's a brand new product from a Taiwanese company, so it's still a little rough around the edges in terms of documentation (and I've got some doubts about whether the use of the Lego connecting holes is actually legal!), but the hardware build quality is excellent and it looks really powerful. Here's what comes in the box:

That's an I2C multiplexer, which connects to the NXT CPU (and allows other I2C sensors to be connected) and a servo mulitplexer, with ports for up to ten servos. (You can add more of these boxes to a total of 160 servos--all independently driven by one NXT!). The I2C multiplexer costs $140 and the servo driver is $60. Both are quite small, around the size of a standard RC servo or RC receiver. The C code to run them is available here. I haven't had a chance to put it through its paces yet, but I'm pretty jazzed about what I've seen. But at this point I need to disclose that there is a competitor to this product that I've been beta testing for the past few months (but can't yet talk about). Indeed, I've built a whole new UAV around this other NXT-to-servo hardware, which I'll be showing at the FIRST Robotics Championships in Atlanta on April 16-18. The ability to use the Mindstorms controller, sensors and IDEs for proper aerial robotics is nothing short of mindblowing, and I can't wait to unveil my bird then. In the meantime, here are some more shots of the LatteBox device.

I2C mulitplexer

The servo driver board, out of its case.

Back side of the servo driver board

Both together...

[UPDATE: This is the new case, with the LEGO Technics holes removed. The case shown in the previous images are no longer available. If you order the product, you will get the case here, not the ones shown in the images above it!]
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Hi res daylight

Posted by Jack Crossfire on April 1, 2008 at 11:00am
Had enough daylight to get 1/400 ISO 80 out of the A560. It definitely does a better job with those 7 million pixels. 1/400 is probably just below the minimum shutter speed. In dead calm air, the camera was much more stable. With the current yaw program & the instability of 1Hz GPS, only had enough battery power for a 270' turn on autopilot.
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Project - RC Helicopter Stabilization with Arduino

Posted by Christoph Prantl on April 1, 2008 at 6:30am

This is my current Project-Plan:Stabilize nick and roll of my Walkera Dragonfly DF36 with Arduino and provide an easy interface to the RC servo output.(read acceleration data from a Wii Nunchuck and pulse servos to keep horizontal position)First steps:- Hardware setup- Create a starting sketch and develop it based on libraries and functions.Thanks to everybody who is developing nice stuff for Arduino (it helps me a lot when I get stuck)This is my Blog where I post all my findings:http://www.vodkadoctors.at/captFuture/blog/
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New Wing for Missouri S&T UAV Team

Posted by Nullified on March 30, 2008 at 8:38pm

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Sorry about the lack of updates, we will be updating more frequently now. The first update being that we completed the new wing and completed the first flight with the new wing and it performed very well even in windy conditions. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the actual flight but here are some pictures of the new wing on the airplane. This new wing is significantly stronger allowing us to carry our large payload, it also has less drag allowing us to fly at greater speeds.Although you can’t see from the picture above the entire trailing edge consists of the control surfaces for the flaps and the ailerons, we plan on using the flaps during landing to allow us to land at slower speeds.We have also been working on the onboard computer for the airplane, below are some pictures of it and the new enclosure that we had rapid prototyped out of polycarbonate using the facilities on campus. The onboard computer is a single-board-computer (SBC) with a 1.8GHz Pentium M processor, 1GB of RAM, and 4GB of flash running Ubuntu Linux. This computer will handle all of the image acquisition and some or all of the image processing.

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Since we have the UAV in flying condition again we will be slowly integrating the all of the electronics into the actual airframe and there should be more frequent updates now that we will be back in the testing/development phase.For older posts or information about the project please visit www.aessuav.org
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3D Robotics

Australian UAV contest announces its second year

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 30, 2008 at 6:31pm
The Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation has announced the second year of its amateur UAV contest, called the Outback Challenge, which will be held on the 23rd-24th September 2008, in Kingaroy, Queensland. There are three categories: 1) A remote operation challenge (fly by video downlink only) that's only open the Australian High School students 2) A autonomous UAV target spotting and package delivery challenge (find a dummy representing a lost hiker and drop a water bottle) that's open to anyone. 3) A documentary filmmaking challenge for any of the above teams to make a short video about their entry. Last year the contest was won by a California team from Dionysus Design, although no teams actually finished the challenge (wrap-up video here). This year the competition is sure to be much tougher. Entry forms will be available next month.
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Daylight timelapse from autonomous hover

Posted by Jack Crossfire on March 29, 2008 at 9:00pm
Got some timelapse of a hillside in wind. Wanted to face away from the sun this time but there was nothing to see. Note the sun reflecting off water on the hillside. These were 3k images.
Daylight timelapse from autonomous helicopter from heroine worshipper on Vimeo.Ning is the only game in town for 3k images. Had to go up to ISO 400 to get enough shutter speed to overcome vibration. Crummy camera kept going for smaller iris instead of faster shutter.

Small landing zone, but still $40,000,000 for those 5 sq ft.
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a few ideas gleaned from the microblimp design

Posted by Howard Gordon on March 29, 2008 at 9:00am
Along with a couple of Tri-Turbofan toy blimps, one of the purchases for my early blimp experiments was a Plantraco MicroBlimp, which is the company's current offering. After ordering, I found out that it was too small to carry any useful payload, so I left it in the box until deciding to take a closer look yesterday.Plantraco seems to specialize in really small radio controlled aircraft. They tend to be somewhat expensive, but there are some cool designs. Their current blimp design bears no resemblance to the original Tri-turbofan except that it still uses 3 motors. However, these motors are really small - approx 6mm diameter. The motors may have been designed for pagers or cellphones - I haven't worked with motors this size, but they seem to have a lot of power. These seem to be similar in size to the pager motors sold by Solarbotics. Props are 45mm diameter (1.75"), and everything is attached to a very thin flexible circuit board (0.63mm or 0.025") that's been trimmed to shape. The entire circuit assembly with motors weight 8gm, and total weight with the lipoly 90mAh battery is 10gm. I really like the small motors - I'll have to get some samples from Solarbotics just to see how they compare with the larger N20's.

Two other interesting features - the battery pack uses magnets for the battery terminals, so installing the battery pack is quite simple. I read somewhere that they have a patent pending on this, so someone should do a patent search before taking the idea into production. Also, they use magnets for ballast - also a slick idea (more elegant than kids' eating utensils). Only problem with the magnets is that they will probably screw up the local magnetic field for compass readings, but still something to consider.

The blimp itself is 20" diameter, so it holds approx 2 cu ft of helium. I didn't bother to weigh the envelope, but would guess 20gm, so with electronics, the total package weighs 30gm. I had to add more than 20gm ballast to get neutrally buoyant, so there's a lot to be said for minimizing the weight of the motors and electronics.One additional observation - I don't really care for the 3 motor propulsion system for blimps, as compared with two motors plus a servo for thrust vectoring. However, the 3 motor approach is simple, light and cheap.
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3D Robotics

PCB fabbing advice

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 28, 2008 at 11:30am
For those of you getting into creating your own PCBs, here's some quick advice: We use the CADSoft Eagle software (free version can handle up to two PCB layers). It's powerful but pretty hard to learn. For easier to use (albeit more limited) software, you might try PCBArtist (also free). I'm a newbie, so I use PCBArtist. Jordi is an old hand, so he's now using the pro version of the Eagle software. Once you've designed your board you need to send it off to be fabbed. Here's some advice on the best companies to do that, from a friend, a pro in the industry: "Most of my fab is done by 4PCB. They have good service, online-quotes, fast turn-times, web-tracking and good prices for rectangular any-layer boards. $500 free for first-time customers. For extra cheap small quantities of 2-layer rectangular boards without soldermask or legend: BarebonesPCB (they are actually a re-badged 4pcb). For odd shapes, cut-outs or gold plating, I use: BACircuits. 4pcb can do it all, but they charge a hefty premium for non-standard stuff."
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3D Robotics

New double-sided BlimpBot board!

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 28, 2008 at 11:30am
Our progress towards a $79 UAV mod kit for toy RC blimps is going well. We've now got a much better, two-sided PCB board that we're having fabbed. It's smaller, has more features and now integrates the IR sensors on the same board (Eagle schematic here; mask files here) The board is an Arduino (ATMega168 CPU) clone at heart (we call it "Blimpduino"), with: --Four motor drivers (two 2-motor chips) --Four IR sensors and associated supporting components --Ground-based IR beacon --A choice between rechageable (more expensive) and non-rechargeable (cheaper) Lithium batteries --Port for Ping))) ultrasonic sensor --ISCP and FTDI programing ports Pretty cool--a complete blimp autopilot and sensor package (with one ground beacon) for $79! Don't place your orders yet--we've still got a lot of sourcing and testing still to come--but I'm looking at having it ready for Christmas ;-)
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3D Robotics

Interview: Martin Müller and the Paparazzi Project (now less DIY!)

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 25, 2008 at 10:30pm
We've been following the Paparazzi autopilot project with interest for several years. It's a European open source technology initiative that has created both thermopile (infrared sensor) and gyro-based autopilot hardware, along with quite sophisticated software to run it. But the problem to date is that the only way to use it was to fab your own PCB boards and otherwise built the hardware from scratch. We're all about DIY here, but that's a bit much for most people! So I was delighted to learn last week that you can now buy the Paparazzi hardware pre-made, either as fully-populated PCB or a bare board to solder yourself. That will significantly expand the potential audience for Paparazzi, which is a great thing. To mark this moment, I asked Martin Müller, who was part of the team that gave this awesome demo of global coordination of Paparazzi flights, to explain more about the project. Q: First, can you tell us a little about yourself? As a day job I work as an electrical engineer for a big automotive supplier here in Germany. We do car navigation systems. I have been building RC aircrafts since being a kid. It is amazing what is possible today - much more than what I always dreamed of! Q) Who are the core team now developing Paparazzi? The Paparazzi project started at ENAC in Toulouse, France in 2003 with Antoine Drouin and Pascal Brisset. Later in 2004 people in Germany and Arizona built Paparazzi systems and contributed. Since then more people joined. Some names and pictures can be found at the end of the 24C3 presentation. We try to meet about twice a year, usually at the location of a competition. Q) In broad strokes, what makes Paparazzi special? What was the motivation for developing it? The idea was to build an autonomous aircraft to be able to take part in competitions. Over the years the various competitions pushed the technology forward. The special thing about Paparazzi is that people from diverse fields come together to work on making very small autonomous aircrafts. There are aerodynamics people good in building airframes, flight control, software, electronics and not to forget RC control. Q) Where is Paparazzi going next? The next competition will be in Braunschweig, Germany this summer. Work is in progress to get the quadcopter fully autonomous. Also scientific meteo applications will be important this year. Q) Paparazzi is based on a thermopile sensor (as is the commercial AttoPilot). What are the pros and cons of that, as opposed to gyros and accelerometers? Thermopiles give you an excellent way of flying autonomous aircrafts. They give you an absolute reading which keeps the whole control simple. We have flown in mild Europe, the deserts of south-west US, tropical rainstorms in Florida, near a glacier on Iceland, hot northern India and last week a Paparazzi equipped team collected meteo data by flying from the helicopter deck of a Norwegian coast guard icebreaker. There are limits for thermopiles but they usually do not hurt you. As a hobbyist you do not want to fly in bad weather anyway. For commercial usage - if there is thick fog the on board video camera can not see anything anyway. It will not work in fog or inside clouds and there needs to be some temperature difference. Generally the limit where thermopiles do not work any more is far more towards bad weather than what you would think. Q) Finally, can you describe the set-up and organizational challenges that were required to pull off your amazing CCC demo? The two way telemetry stream was transferred through TCP/IP. Off-the-shelf video software was used for the on board pictures. Some special efforts had to be done to be able to get a connection to the German airfield as we only had a cellphone which was very well shielded by the network firewall. One team each was waiting at the fields in France and Germany, ready to take off and fly the mission!
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3D Robotics

Minimum Blimp V2 PCB files, code

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 25, 2008 at 9:14pm
This is just a quick update for those following along with the Minimum Blimp UAV project. We've modded a toy RC blimp and created our own Arduino clone PCB (complete with motor controllers and ports). Here are the PCB files and source code: --Schematic (Eagle file format) is here. --PCB etch file is here. --Arduino source code is here. Next up: a new PCB that's smaller and integrates the IR sensors. Just as soon as I learn how to use the Eagle software properly....
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Nothing impressive, just my first aerial video.

Posted by Wai Weng Kong on March 25, 2008 at 7:02pm
This is my first aerial video taken with The World Models Super Frontier Senior 46. It's quite a large trainer plane with 2040mm wing span and a lot of dihedral. The fuselage also has a lot of room for my equipments.

The video is taken with the Canon PowerShot A430 digital camera attached to the bottom of the fuselage.

Currently, there is no autopilot system in the plane yet. The plane is controlled manually. I just start recording the video before I take off the plane. It turned out the video is quite shaky without the stabilizing platform for the camera.
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diydrones vs rcgroups vs runryder

Posted by Jack Crossfire on March 24, 2008 at 6:25pm
Rcgroups & runryder definitely seemed to dry up after diydrones appeared. They're now more focused on promoting businesses while diydrones has attracted the hobbyists, but Ning really needs more organization than the Latest Activity list. Here's a robotic copter update.

Had to point into the wind for more stability. That's also where the sun is.
More autonomous hover in wind from heroine worshipper on Vimeo.
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3D Robotics

Where are the "add blog post" and "add forum discussion" links?!

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 21, 2008 at 8:07am
Last night Ning, our social network hosting platform, pushed out a few new features and in the process changed our look and feel a bit. Among those changes: the "Add a blog post" link at the bottom of the blog listings and "Add a discussion" link at the bottom of the forum listings are gone. So now how do you do those things? Answer: use the tabs above. You add a discussion topic on the "Forum" tab and add a blog post on the "My Page" tab (under the "My Blog" subtab). This isn't ideal, and I assume it's just temporary until Ning rolls out a more flexible layout toolset. But in the meantime, the tabs are your friend ;-)
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3D Robotics

Autonomous blimps at MAKE NYC meetup

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 21, 2008 at 7:30am
MAKE Magazine's New York City meetup (a hardware hackathon open to all) is next week, on the 27th, and this time they've got blimps! Here's the announcement: What can a group of Makers do with a tank of helium? We're not sure! Care to find out? The sixth Make:NYC Meeting includes: Challenge: Blimps You've got brains, we've got blimps. Two teams will compete to make an ordinary RC blimp perform extraordinarily. Arrive on time to make sure you get in on all the lighter-than-air action. Show and Tell Meet your fellow NYC Makers and show off your creations! Bring your gadgets, gizmos, sketches, ideas… anything you’d like to put in the spotlight. We encourage NYC Makers to collaborate on and discuss DIY projects. If you’re planning to bring a project, drop us a note at meetings@makenyc.org. If you’d like to attend we have plenty of space for everyone, but please RSVP! Location Make Offices, 2nd Floor (Google Map) 325 Gold St. at Flatbush Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11201
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3D Robotics

Minimum Blimp V2 update

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 19, 2008 at 6:00am
As mentioned before, for the second version of our Minimum Blimp Jordi and I decided to mod a RC toy blimp on the grounds that it will be cheaper and more robust than trying to build the whole mechanical assembly ourselves (the aim is to have a fully programmable and hackable blimp UAV kit for less than $100). Jordi started with $15 toy (gondola shown above), ripped out the RC electronics and built his own Arduinio board, IR sensor package and added a Ping))) sensor for altitude hold. Here are a few shots of the first version (please forgive the protoboard disasters--we'll neaten it up for the next rev!)

Underside of the blimp gondola, showing custom IR sensors for navigation and Ping))) ultrasonic sensor for altitude hold. (enlarge to check out the DIYDrones branding on the IR board!)

Inside of the blimp gondola, showing the custom Arduino board. This Toy blimp just got a major brain transplant! We'll be showing a more polished version of this blimp at the FIRST Robotics National Championship in Atlanta, April 17-19.
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UAV Project Progress - flight gear simulation, first steps

Posted by Cory on March 18, 2008 at 8:22pm

I am working on using flight gear to simulate and test my UAV code. The screen shot shows flight gear and the C# application that is receiving the data. the way I see it, the first step is to read some data out of flight gear. I am using a TCP socket to read the data. I have achieved display of the raw string of data. My next step will be to parse the data into meaningful bits. I have been looking all over the net for information on using flight gear for UAV simulation. I haven't found anything I can use, so I am trying the roll your own approach. The idea is to be able to run my own control algorithms on live flight gear data.Let me know in the comments if you know of any prior work that I could use to facilitate this.
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Autonomous UAV Aerobatics Project

Posted by Cory on March 18, 2008 at 6:54pm

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here are two notes below that describe the fantastic video demonstration of the MIT Autonomous Airplane Indoor Flying test. Keep your eye on this page for more info in the future."In these flight tests, a fixed vertical landing platform was designed and attached to a concrete pole in the middle of the RAVEN flight space to allow the fixed-wing aircraft to land and perch on the pole. This test is similar to the test performed on January 28th, 2007 except in this test the platform was attached to the wall. This test was repeated number of times and a video shows repeating the vehicle take-off, hover and land sequence twice. In this flight test, the aircraft took off from the vertical landing apparatus and autonomously moved to a location in the northeastern area of the room in the hover configuration. Once the vehicle reached this location, the vehicle was commanded to transition to level flight mode and flew 3 laps around the room. These three laps were completed in about 10 secs (since the vehicle was flying at approx. 6 m/s during the flight). Following the laps, the system commanded the vehicle to transition back to the hover mode and once it stablized itself began its decent to attempt a landing on the vertical landing apparatus. Note that room is approx 8 meters wide."I found this post on DailyDiy.comThe site is fantastic. It is impressive work.
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