My final project is of quad-copter and automatic control. The research project focuses on proposing a theoretical and experimental framework to develop a complete autonomous air vehicle system capable to take off, fly, and explore an unknown indoor-outdoor environment and landing. The idea also consists of making it open source and simplify the whole fabrication and assembly process. as in the beginning i was quiet ambitious about the project as i was thinking to add some sensors to make automatic self-control for the drone by using IR sensor which detects the obstacles so that it docent crash into something and sonar sensor for it help while landing.during the midterm when i was talking to Neil about the project there is one more student Aldo Sollazzo in FABLAB Barcelona is also working on the drone as his final project and Neil has suggested us to work together in a group and make the drone (at least) fly. Here is the link to see the details
Goal So now the goal for this week is to document the process and progress of the Drone, integrating and insight into all the thing has been done so far and what all the things we required next. What will it do? So now i am working with Aldo Sollazzo and together, we will make a drone combine with Gopro assembly to collect the data of terrain (3D Scan) and use that data for different application like generating 3D model, different environmental analysis and also some other cool stuff like Video mapping but thats the next task(as part of the further development in future). Who's done that beforehand? Now a days, there lot of things, where drones are being explored for example the Areal Robotic Construction Techniques, Transportation and also for the Photography and Video mapping. Specifically, the development of quad-copters has generated great interest in the automatic control area. but its still not so much about generating the theoretical and experimental framework to develop a complete autonomous air vehicle system. and this project is developed by different skills which i have learnt throughout the Fabacademy. In the near future, there are several fields in which the use of robots can be beneficial in order to complete tasks with precise timing or position requirements that are complex, or that are to be carried out in hostile environments . What materials and components will be required? In terms of material, the project requires, a sheet of ply wood (500 X 500 X4.5 MM), which we ll be getting from the local supplier. next thing is the Gopro assembly, which we going to 3D print here in the Fablab including the screw and bolt here in the Fablab Barcelona. In terms of Hardware (Electronic components), we need four brushless motors with ESC drivers, 4 propeller and controller and 2 servo motors for the Gopro Assembly, which we need to buy and the FabIMU(electronic board) to make the drone fly, which we are going to make it here. How much will it cost? we are trying to recycle all the materials and electronics as much as possible. so we are reusing Plywood (4.5MM)from the wastage and most of the hardwares from the FablabBCN, which includes 4 brushless motors ( 16.75 USD /unit) and 4 20A ESCs ( 10.80 USD /unit)and remote control except followings:4 Propellers - 4 EURO Li-Po (3 cell - 2 v)Battery - 12.5 USDFor the FabIMU board most of the electronic components are available in the fab inventory except the following ones, the prices for those components is around 25 USD: HMC5883L : Magnetic Sensors - IC COMPASS 3 AXIS I2C 16LCC SMDMPU-6000 : GYRO/ACCELEROMETER 6AXIS 24QFNCG0603MLC-05E - Circuit ProtectionMF-MSMF050-2 500mA - Multifuse® Resettable fuses (circuit protection)MH2029-300Y - FiltersCSTCE8M00G55-R0-Resonators 8Mhz VREG 5V 0.1AVREG 5V 1AVREG 3.3V Most of the components are available in the inventory and altogether the prices is around 40 USD and other material like wood and propellers are around 25 Euro. What parts and systems will be made and what process will be used? As per the requirement of the Drone we are trying to make almost everything except the propellers, ESCs for the Motors and controller. Parametric Drone structural frame design made with Rhino and Grasshopper with all the press fit joinery. It also can adopt the thickness of the material and also the sizes for the other components like motors, propellers,electronic board, etc and as we are using wood we are going to laser-cut the structure. FabIMU (Electronic board) designed with Eagle with the help of an open source design of ArduIMU but we have modified it by changing Atmega328p micro-controller with Atmega 32u4 by doing that we are taking out few components which we are using like voltage translator, Single-Pole, Double-Throw Analog Switch and embedded micro-controller and as it has more connectivity so we can have mini USB port which will make this board easy to program. and since we are using MPU600 (3 axis GYRO and 3 axis accelerometer combined) and HMC5883L(3 axis Magnetometer) components as they are super small we can’t mill with 1/64 bit, we had to use the old technic of make the circuit board which is of Light exposure and acid process. The result of the board came out quiet precise (surprisingly). The only thing with this is that you have to make all the hole for the pinout and vias manually. Gopro assembly with all the gears designed with Rhino software and we are going to use the Makerbot-3Dpritner to print the whole assembly. What tasks need to be completed? First prototype of the drone frame is done based on that we made some changes regarding the joinery and all so final need to get done. Assembling 4 motors and flashing the ESCs(if require) Programing the board Finally make the drone fly What questions need to be answered? Mainly its about the programming the board How to control the motion of the flight (roll, pitch, yaw) by controlling the speed of the all four motors How to communicate and create a network to combine 2 servo motors with the same board. What is the schedule? We have spend a lot of time in oder to make the grasshopper script for the drone frame structure which is all parametric and also doing a research for the FabIMU to understand all the components and how can we modify, in order to make it more efficient and also simplify a bit. these are the two main things which took most of the time since these file are ready to replicate it docent take much time but the only thing which we still need to work on is the programming. Drone frame structure (laser-cut and assembly) half a day. Making a circuit board and soldering all the components 1 day. Sssembly of all the motors with Esc and FabIMU (Debugging) will take 1 day. Programming still need to work on it (but once its ready, to replicate the drone it just a matter of uploading the code). How will it be evaluated? The drone will be evaluated based on whether its flying, crashing or just stay on the ground.