Milestones

Upcoming Milestones

• Serial control of flight controller from Raspberry Pi
• WIFI connection of Pi to Ground Control
• Control Flight Controller from Ground Control
• Complete hardware assembly 
• Laser-cut acrylic frame to secure controllers to copter
• Blade guards (Laser-cut acrylic?)
• Fix Kinect to bottom of copter, may need to extend legs on frame
• Balance components
• Flight tests
• Implement SLAM algorithms

Completed Milestones

• Kinect controlled via Raspberry Pi
• Point cloud extracted from Kinect
• New flight controller installed and tested
• Battery power for all components

Electronic Components

Electronic Components Running on Battery Power

• Main Controller: Raspberry Pi 3
• Ability to run Robot Operating System (ROS), which has existing open-source code for Kinect operability
• Built in WIFI for communication with ground control
• Easy serial communication with Flight Controller
• Flight Controller: Crius All-In-One Pro v2.0
•  Running open-source MultiWii platform
• On board IMU, magnetometer, and barometer
• Ability to fine-tune PIDs
• Sensor: Xbox 360 Kinect
• ESCs: HobbyWing 20A Turnigy Plush 30A ESC w/ BEC
• Motors: Suppo BL-2208/12 NTM 2826-1100Kv/ 252w
• Battery: Pulse Ultra 3300mAh 14.8V 35C LiPo

Block Diagram of Electronic Components

Summer Progress

In the very first meeting we had over the summer we made the decision to make a huge change to our project. We realized that we would be extremely lucky if we could get through the project without breaking the lidar sensor at some point. And with a "cheap" lidar unit costing several hundred dollars, we decided we needed to try a different option. In the end we decided to go with an Xbox 360 Kinect sensor. The Kinect has both a regular RGB camera and a depth camera equipped. The best part about it is that it only costs around $30 at your local Gamestop. There is also plenty of support for the Kinect in the ROS environment. The room mapping with the Kinect will also be much more appealing. Instead of the two dimensional bird-eye-view room mapping that the lidar would provide, the Kinect will enable us to recreate the room as a point cloud in three dimensions and with color. We are very satisfied with our decision to switch to the Kinect, especially since we have already fried two Kinects over the summer which would have bankrupted us if they were lidar units.

Other decisions that we made over the summer were to use the Multiwii flight controller. This open source project seems to work well with the Raspberry Pi we are using as the brains of our quad-copter. It is well known for being cheap and simple while also being high quality.

As for a summer progress report, we were able to get ROS up and running on the Raspberry Pi and on the server computer that the Pi will report to. We hope to have the Pi report to the server in real time so that you can see the map as it is being generated, but that will be something extra to add once we have the base project running. We were able to get the Kinect working with a ROS package called rgbdslam and are able to generate colored three dimensional point clouds of the room by moving the Kinect around the room. We also managed to wire the Kinect, flight controller, and Pi to be battery powered.

The next goals that we are working on are to get the Pi and Multiwii talking to each other so that we can get our quad-copter off the ground and to come up with an obstacle avoidance routine using the Kinect's depth camera.

Members

Members

• Ben Antczak - u0376370 [at] utah.edu
• Dusty Argyle - dusty.argyle@utah.edu
• Nick Hallstrom - 

Previous Posts

Here are our previous meetings posted on our old website:

Meeting March 10, 2016

For our initial meeting, we decided what we would need to keep track of on the website. We Also made the website available via a repository stored on Bitbucket so it remains private to our team.

We also started to decide a timeline on our milestones. Nothing concrete has been decided but some ballpark timelines were offered and it was decided that we would reflect on them in order to start nailing down our projects deadlines.

Meeting April 14, 2016

This week we met to determine a protocal that we will follow for the bluetooth communication. This will allow us to control the quadcopter with various commands shown in this document here

We decided to take the weekend to try to implement the bluetooth communication as well as work on the IMU. Once we have some basic commands setup for safety and manual navigation, we will be able to do more in-depth testing.

Meeting March 17, 2016

This week we have started ordering parts. Our main focus is the quadcopter at least until summer. In the summer, we will get more serious about integrating the quadcopter and the lidar. This will start to provide a base for our SLAM implementation. The current parts are listed below:

• Aluminum Framing
• Brushless Motors x4
• Electronic Speed Controllers x4
• STM32F407 Microcontroller
• Jumper wires
• Gyrometer

Meeting April 21, 2016

This week we got together and tested the bluetooth thoroughly to make sure that it was the protocal we wanted. We were able to tune the pid using the bluetooth to test. We were also able to run various other commands to manipulate the state of the quadcopter.

We have added some files to show our progress. This is our report hich shows things like the bill of materials, future applications, implementation strategies...etc. Report

We also have a video that you can download and watch here: Video

Meeting March 24, 2016

The week we worked on the quadcopters frame. The aluminum frame provides a good prototype base for our quadcopter. We mounted everything the frame and put the frame in a test harness built with the same aluminum. We then mounted the board onto the quadcopter and started to test the quadcopter's microntroller.

We have gotten a basic setup to start implementation/testing of the quadcopter. We have found one unforeseen issue thus far, we need a wireless kill switch. So we have order a bluetooth module to attach the quadcopter and plan to use it to connect to the computer to safely kill the device remotely.

Meeting March 31, 2016

This week we accomplished a basic PID control of the motors. We also dented the aluminum frame of the quadcopter. We now have order a significantly stronger frame made of a high quality plastic with an on board PCB in case we need it. There is also some special mounts for the quadcopter motors. This frame should be in by the end of the week. We will have to gut the old frame and reset everything we have done thus far.

Meeting April 7, 2016

This week we worked on mounting our components to the frame. We thought we had broken one of the motors but found out that our power supply wasn't providing enough current. We calculated we will need about 8 Amps to drive the motors completely. Shortly after requesting the new power supply we received one to test on. We still have not tested since the quadcopter is still being put back together on the new frame. As soon as this is done and we setup shop, we will test with the old powersupply first to make sure we are properly connected. Once we are in a good state, we will try the new power supply since we don't know if it is in working condition. We are also working on the bluetooth kill switch which came in this week.