Flight Controller / (cheap) drone for autonomous cargo pickup and drop-off drone - university project

A

Andreas-Menzel

New Member
tldr: I need a cheap drone (quadrocopter) or a flight controller, so that I can control a drone with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi to implement a landing and cargo pickup routine. What drone or flight controller do you suggest?

I am currently beginning my final university project for my bachelor thesis. My goal is to have a drone (quadrocopter) that can autonomously fly between gps-waypoints, land at a special cargo station, pick up a small box, take off, fly to a predefined gps-location and drop the packet off.

I am currently looking for 1) a cheap drone (quadrocopter) or (preferably) 2) a flight controller + software. I have to be able to send some kind of commands to the drone to control it: "fly to this gps location", "fly a little bit to the left", "go down 30cm" ...

Background: My current plan is to have a Raspberry Pi (or Arduino) as the high-level mission planner: Communicate with a server and start the drone when needed. Use all kinds of sensors and communicate with the cargo station to get the exact location relative to the cargo station (important for landing). The Raspberry Pi may also implement some kind of collision avoidance and communicate with other drones in the future.

What about ArduPilot? Which flight controller is best suited? Is it a good idea to upload the ArduPilot software to an e.g. Arduino Due?

What cheap drones and / or flight controllers + software can you recommend?
 
DRONE PROJECT

Requirements:

1- cheap – F450 size

2- programmable missions – Mission Planner

3- easy to assemble – buy kit with most parts so they fit

4- GPS – needed for programmable missions

5- lift payload – how heavy?

Plan – build drone kit from common parts and program with “Mission Planner” (free software)

PARTS:

Quad 450 kit – complete – some assembly required – best if locate drone nerd in your area to help assemble and fly.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256...516719820847477987e8f79!12000030061806871!rec



Happy Landings,

Vince
 
Yah ardupilot or iNav basically the way to go here, lots of flight controllers with STM32F4 or better (STM32F7) chip can be flashed to run either betaflight for just basic auto levelling and return to home functions or externally taking control inputs and just handling the auto-levelling or iNav, effectively what matters is if there is a target for each of those firmwares for the given hardware on a flight controller (basically pin mappings and hardware definitions saying what type of accelerometer/gyro are on board and what pin on the MCU they're attached to).

Check out the respective github for the code for each and links to documentation to get better understanding of what each firmware supports and what hardware platforms they can each target.

github.com

GitHub - betaflight/betaflight: Open Source Flight Controller Firmware

Open Source Flight Controller Firmware. Contribute to betaflight/betaflight development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
github.com

GitHub - iNavFlight/inav: INAV: Navigation-enabled flight control software

INAV: Navigation-enabled flight control software. Contribute to iNavFlight/inav development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
github.com

GitHub - ArduPilot/ardupilot: ArduPlane, ArduCopter, ArduRover, ArduSub source

ArduPlane, ArduCopter, ArduRover, ArduSub source. Contribute to ArduPilot/ardupilot development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

The rest of the hardware I would suggest get carbon fiber frame, can get motors and ESC basically any vendor can look at popular prebuilt options or Youtube lots of 2022 quadcopter builds I'm sure with hardware for various sizes (size will depend on payload and flight time needed etc.) For hardware calculations suggest people check out ecalc.ch not affiliated in any way but have paid for the license to unlock all the options when building custom in the past. Also suggest check out ELRS if need telemetry and good long distance control link it's a good open source option:

github.com

GitHub - ExpressLRS/ExpressLRS: ESP32/ESP8285-based High-Performance Radio Link for RC applications

ESP32/ESP8285-based High-Performance Radio Link for RC applications - ExpressLRS/ExpressLRS
github.com github.com

Would suggest you want the on board computer to be able to do the waypoint missions without a ground link necessarily but depending on the range needed etc. it might be viable to keep constant link established (seen some 20km tests with long range gear).
 
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