I’m thinking of getting into robotics but I only have very basic programming skill and servo experience. I have a dream though to put on indoor drone shows to entertain kids and to get them interested in robotics. I’d want to use small palm-sized drones with LEDs and set a show/flight plan that is controlled by PC, preferably using GUI software. So far I’ve found Marvelmind and Crazyflie navigation systems. I can’t find any info or tutorials on drone shows with Marvelmind. With Crazyflie they show a video of a drone show synced to music, and have bundles for the hardware which would make things considerably easier for myself and kids. What concerns me is that there’s little, to no, programming support, discussion or samples for shows aside from a simple swarm script. The drone show guy says the program is too complicated and messy to offer its customers. The system doesn’t appear to be completely reliable yet and in early stages. What I fear is that I’d buy all this pricey gear and run into a brick wall right at the end.
I have a second future goal in mind as well that might be out of my reach. I’d like to control a robot’s position, such as Lynxmotion’s biped or Johnny or equivalent, using the same navigation system if possible. So far my search for integrating Lynxmotion with Marvelmind or Crazflie has come up empty too. It doesn’t have to be Lynxmotion, but I like what they offer for robots on their site. For drones, their models are likely too big for indoor swarming use.
Any advice or tutorials would be appreciated!
Peter
For the first part of your message: You’re correct that we have not yet seen any commercially available (or even open source) drone swam software. This might be due to the fact that buying that many drones, getting approval, dealing with safety regulations, in-flight failures etc. is really likely to only be done by a company or research institution.
Regarding the second part, can you confirm you’d like to do swarm as well, or just positioning? Neither of the robots you mentioned (biped or Johnny) have any direct need for indoor programming, nor would GPS be at all useful indoors.You’d need to use one of a few indoor localization systems and program the robot to autonomously navigate an indoor environment.
Both of these are incredibly software intensive (and complex hardware), so the general suggestion would be to start learning and start smaller.
Many thanks for your thoughts on this. I’m gathering too that this is a little too ambitious for me at the moment. I’ll start with smaller goals, with one drone at a time and perhaps wait for newer tech to come out to make things run smoother.
With the biped I just wanted to control one, and I think that can be more achievable with current hardware. The humanoid robots look rather wobbly to me though on Youtube. I may go the hexapod route for now instead.
I enjoy a bit of programming, yes. A lot, no. Math isn’t a strong talent either. I love being creative though. Technically and/or artistically. Hence the drone show idea to entertain.
Like a lot of folks, I’m really waiting for a more robust robot that could stand about 2 or 3 tall at the very least and doesn’t cost a few hundred grand. The UXA-90 is pretty close, minus the cost.
