ECE 4901 Fall 2017 Group 1829 - Unmanned Air Vehicles Final - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

ECE 4901 Fall 2017 Group 1829 - Unmanned Air Vehicles Final Semester I Presentation

Tony Chen (EE) David Kay (EE) Ravi Patel (CSE/EE) Sponsor: UConn ECE Dept. (Prof. Shalabh Gupta)

Agenda

• Our Task
• Component Selection

○ Flight Controller ○ Drift Minimizer ○ Imaging

• Current Progress

○ Hardware ○ Software

• Timeline
• Budget

Our Task

To create an autonomous drone that can:

• Take off, find, and land on flat surfaces
• Identify, pickup, and stack boxes
• Avoid obstacles

Our Task (cont.)

Basic Components

DJI Flamewheel F450

• Robust
• Modular
• Affordable frame

Flight Controller

Pixhawk Autopilot

• Open source autopilot
• All-in-one unit

Sensors:

• 3-axis 16-bit gyroscope
• ST Micro LSM303D 3-axis 14-bit

accelerometer / magnetometer

• MEAS MS5611 barometer

Interfaces:

• UART
• CAN
• I2C
• MicroSD

Flight Controller Alternatives

ArduPilot:

• Pros

○ Supports all kinds of sensors and has telemetry and flight logging capabilities ○ Excellent software, easy to setup

• Cons

○ Getting obsolete with little to no support. ○ Poor performance Eagle Tree Vector:

• Pros

○ Supports many different flight configurations, including fixed wing ○ Controls a craft very well, even with minimum tuning

• Cons

○ Costs more than Pixhawk

Drift Minimizer

PX4Flow Sensor:

• Optical flow smart camera
• Uses ground texture and visible features to

determine aircraft ground velocity ○ Works where GPS can’t reach

• Indoors and outdoor, including low light

conditions (no need for external illumination)

• 3 axis gyro allows for compensation of vehicle

tilt and heading relative to the ground

• Designed to work with Pixhawk FC

Drone Sensor Alternative

LeddarTech – Vu8 Lidar Sensor:

• Detection range up to 215 m (≈ 700 ft)
• Compact and lightweight (≈ 75 g)
• 20°, 48° and 100° beam width options, for
• ptimized field of view
• Immune to ambient light, no moving parts, for

ultimate robustness

• Limited Compatibility

Laser and Imaging

Kinect:

• Specifications:

○ 0.8 to 4 meter ○ 57° FOV (horizontal) ○ 43° FOV (vertical)

• Limited to indoor use

Identification Makers

High Contrast Color Combinations:

• Easily Detected
• Limited Interference

Alternatives: Downsides: QR Codes Requires Very Clear Image Retroreflective Material Expensive / Single Color Shapes Requires Very Stable Image Text Computation Heavy

Target Detection

• Need method to identify objects & locations
• Pixy sensor (CMUcam5):

○ Affordable ○ Open Source ○ One-touch button to learn objects ○ Identification of pre-programmable color codes (2+ colors from 7 readable colors) ○ Detects object shape and orientation (angle)

Pixy

Pros

• Able to use color as object detection
• Pixy can learn up to seven color signatures.

○ Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Violet

• Multiple color combination are possible
• Can detect angle, width, height

Cons

• White balance
• Incandescent vs Fluorescent lighting can affect color

signature ○ Can be easily recalibrated for each lighting

Onboard Computer

Alternative: Raspberry Pi3

• 1.2 GHz Quad-core CPU
• 1GB RAM
• Micro SD slot
• Raspbian (Debian branch-off)
• $35

ODROID XU4

• 2GHz octa-core CPU
• 2GB LPDDR2 RAM
• Micro SD slots
• Linux 16.04 or Android
• Better for onboard flight computations
• $61

Odroid XU4 Raspberry Pi3

Signal Flow Diagram

Camera Sensor

Flow Sensor

Gripper Electronic Speed Controller

Current Progress: Hardware

Placement:

• Underneath the CENTER of Drone
• IN FRONT of the Drone

○ Heavy objects throw off balance Design Concept:

• Flat Vise Grip Style
• 3D Printed
• Landing Gear / Base of Drone

Current Progress: Software

Sensor Data

XU4 Gripper CMUCam5 Sensor

Switch Data Commands

Timeline

March-April: Test, Verify, and Validate Results October: Finalize Designs and Order Components December: Software Development Familiarization (Prototype) November: Complete Hardware Assembly January-February: Software Development (Integration)

Component Cost

Items Cost

Pixhawk Flight controller

$110.00

PX4 Flow Sensor

$150.00

Odroid XU4

$61.00

CMUcam5 (Pixy)

$69.00

Kinect Sensor

$50.00

Gripper

$20.00

Questions?