Fully autonomous quadcopter for indoor flight

Ender1618

Ender1618

New Member
I have an interest in developing a fully autonomous quadcopter robot specifically for indoor flight.

I am an engineer (what I do in my day job) with experience in robotics, computer vision, navigation/localization, and overall AI.

I was wondering what peoples opinions would be on what quadcopter platform I should attempt to base this project of mine?

So far i am thinking of using an AR Parrot 2, DJI Phantom 3, or a 3DR Solo as the quadcopter.

I currently intend to use a Jetson TK1 as the the onboard computer for control. Also my idea is to use a combination of an on board camera stereo pair, a (or pair of) depth sensor camera(s) (such as a Kinect, or any other OpenNI compatible sensor), a IMU (probably an XSens), along with N ultra sonic rangers.

I know this may seem overly ambitious, but i am familiar with the current research in controlling a quadcopter via on board sensors. I am also adept at developing and expanding upon techniques such as particle filter based localization, visual odometry, SLAM, and Kalman filter based sensor fusion.

The key concept here is that i would like to have this thing be able to fly indoors, and explore its environment.

Any suggestions?
 
Put a ring around the copter with 3 or 4 ultrasonic sensors equally spaced. You should be able to get some idea where a found item is by the strength difference between the sensors. You will need a couple or so on top and bottom. Sensing position in relationship to something is much more difficult then just having a single sensor to find forward or down - the inter-relationships between will have to be explored and mapped to find how they interact. Sounds like a lot of work to me....
 
An interesting idea but not an easy one. I would start with the smallest one that would support keeping all of the hardware in the air for a few minutes.

Seems like if this comes with an onboard sdk you would be 80% complete. (Intel collision detection unit)

ff to 2:00
 
Any suggestions on a quadcopter that would be good for indoor use, has a payload that could support the TK1 and at least one kinect like sensor, and has an open enough api that I could control the copter at a low enough level to achieve highly reactive behaviors?
 
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