Collision Avoidance Systems?

[LoneRCRanger]

Has anyone come up with a collision avoidance system for quadcopters? It would nice to have such a system so I can forget about crashing into trees, light & power poles, my neighbor's new car, my house, a dumb bird checking it out to see if it's edible. Come on guys, lets get cracking on this vital technology. We've got GPS and Return Home, why not "Anti-crash" too?

No, I am not trying to be funny here, I am serious, uh, sort of...

 

[GJH105775]

Haha, it has been done with sonar. There may be one or two opensource, but you'd have to do a lot of work to get it to work.

 

[LoneRCRanger]

I found this white paper on Collision Avoidance using Ultrasonic detection. For those interested in the technical aspect of the paper, please click the following link.

http://www8.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/10030800/user_upload/quadcopter/Paper/Gageik_Mueller_Montenegro_2012_OBSTACLE_DETECTION_AND_COLLISION_AVOIDANCE_USING_ULTRASONIC_DISTANCE_SENSORS_FOR_AN_AUTONOMOUS_QUADROCOPTER.pdf

 

[holtneil]

Hi Bruce at rc model reviews has been working on the system

 

[LoneRCRanger]

I viewed this video. The theoreticals are right with it. RADAR is the way to go. However, Passive RADAR isn't going to work for a quadcopter because the concern is not flying into an airplane at altitude but a tree or bush at low altitude. A tree or bush is also not likely to give off a radio signature that the passive RADAR needs to work. There would be more radio 'noise' from the quad's own electronics to interfere with the passive RADAR. I think the active RADAR is more likely to be practical. We don't need a transmitter much more powerful than those used to send the FPV signal back to the controller and we are only looking for detection to up to say 50 feet (how many meters is that?) forwardly looking with the software command to stop forward motion and reverse course when an obstacle is detected. This gentleman talks like he is designing something that already exists for regular passenger carrying aircraft.

 

[LoneRCRanger]

Additional comment: I guess FPV with LOS (Line Of Sight) is still the best course for the small quads with FPV capabilities.

 

[holtneil]

That depend on where you live in the UK we can only do FPV in line of sight with a spotter , in the USA they can do long range FPV