Autonomous Drone

jonnyalpha · December 12, 2016, 2:39pm

Hi;

I run an after school electronics, robotics and coding club. This year for a project we successfully launched flew and recovered a High Altitude Balloon with a Raspberry Pi Radio Tracker and Camera on board.

Next year I have a few ideas but a friend has approached me asking if I would like to get the children involved in trying to build an autonomous drone!?!?@?>£>$ The reason for this is that BAE is putting together an Autonomous Drone Race Challenge.

At first I suggested that this would be way over our heads however the more we talked the more inteersting it got. It would at least be a heck of a challenge that would keep them enthused.

We would be using an Off The Shelf sub £200 Drone and hack a Raspberry Pi into it to handle the sensor processing. I was considering ultrasonic detection for collision avoidance and height recognition. The drone will also need some form of camera recognition to keep it with the outer boundaries of the track which consists of a Red Outer and Green Inner (I think) boarders?

Are we completely CRAZY ?

cbenson · December 13, 2016, 4:28pm

Not crazy, especially if you

Not crazy, especially if you start with an almost complete frame with flight controller. It will essentially be 100% coding, which does not make it much fun for those who like mechanics or wiring. The sensors needed are long-range, which come with a price tag, and one crash can destroy everything, so teams which participate will likely have a small fleet of drones and spare parts.

jonnyalpha · December 24, 2016, 4:19am

So if we need to fit a drone

So if we need to fit a drone with a ready made flight contoller like this one/

The flight controller takes care of finding out how fast its going, how high it is etc and we then hack in a Raspberry Pi or Arduino so that instead of the the Drone receiving its commands from a user it becomes automated, using the information obtained from its onboard sensors?

Additional sensors I guess would be for identifying external influences such as objects and course following.

With a built in manual override!!