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Robotics &
Big Data Lab
Our Project:
Anchor 1
Goal
Our task was managing to hold and hover over a specific point in the room using Syma S107 helichoper.
Capture
Device
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We used four 4 mm hemisphere facial markers to mark our helicopter- Cockpit, Tail Rotor and each of the Landing Skids.
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The lab was coverd by Six OptiTrack Flex motion capture cameras that could track our marked copter and sample it's location at any time.
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The OptiTrack cameras were connected to a hub and then to the computer via USB.
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We used Motive:Tracker software which provided us a real time object tracking in six degrees of freedom and integrated with MATLAB.
Application
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We used a strong IR led that was hooked to an Arduino board through a breadboard.
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After Processing the data we received from Motive SDK we serialized an Arduino command that will be trasmitted to the copter in real time.
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Every command that was transmitted changed the "Pitch", "Throttle" and "Yaw" values of the copter in order to direct it toward a same specific coordinate in the room.
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Our main difficulty was how to redefine these three parameters above once the helicopter reaches the desired point. Since, it already has a momentum toward a specific direction. We used some tricks:
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We didn't actually aim to the desired point in the room but to some midpoint that was located in between the copter and the desired point.
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Once the copter gets located inside some critical radius from the desired point we started to use a revrse pitch and only allowed minor changes in the new values of the "Yaw" and "Throttle" for the next Arduino command.
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Video
The video was recorded in the dark since the copter could receive the IR signal
better this way.
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