Android Question Autonomous Drone Navigation

[udg]

Hi all,
I am totally new to the drone subject (only used an RC to fly a toy-helicopter for a few minutes), so my project could be too ambitious or even well behind current available wide-spread technologies.

Final goal: a drone that is awakened by a signal (e.g surveillance beam interruption, time of the day set in a PC, whatever) and then it's able to drive itself to a target point in space. Once there, the drone should use image analysis to compare camera shots in order to follow a moving target. Once the "mission" is over the drone will land to its place and recharge its batteries.

I believe that most if not all the basic technologies are available, but I'm not sure about the autonomous navigation system since what I've read so far is about software interfacing with the RC and I don't know if the latter is used just to send commands or a human presence is always needed.

TIA for your comments, hints and links.

 

[Erel]

You can fully navigate a DJI drone and it is actually quite simple.

Analyzing the image will be more complicated.
Flying it completely autonomously is also a challenge.

 

[udg]

Thank you Erel.
Can you point me to any basic (introductory level) documentation?
When you fly a drone, what kind of commands do you send? Something like "elevate 10m, fly right 20m" or something like "elevate for 3s, fly right 5s"?
To reach a precise point in an ample area would you consider something like a few radio beam signals?

ps: I read about your B4x library, but I am still on the "collect preliminary info" stage; generally I prefer to devote enough (long) time to project design before diving in coding and assembling parts.

 

[Erel]

This is the relevant library: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/dji-drones.75244/#content

https://www.b4x.com/android/help/dji.html

 

[udg]

https://www.b4x.com/android/help/dji.html

WOW, you did a lot of work!
Can you recomend any good reading on the Internet too?
Do you think it will be doable to add hw features to a standard DIJ drone and manage them through hooks in yor lib? I have no specific hw in mind at this stage, my question is just about how easy could be to extend your lib to manage data from eventual additional sources placed on-board.

 

[Erel]

http://developer.dji.com/

Do you think it will be doable to add hw features to a standard DIJ drone and manage them through hooks in yor lib?

The question is how will the sensors send the data through the drone communication channel. I think that you will need to implement the on board SDK for this, which is not available in the standard models.

Another option is to put an Arduino with a GSM board and then connect to the device over the internet.

 

[BillMeyer]

Aah - another love of mine that I give hopelessly too little time to:

Here are some resources to read:

Arduino based: http://ardupilot.org/ardupilot/index.html (Making B4R the ideal ?)

Collision Avoidance: http://www.instructables.com/id/Quadcopter-Collision-Avoidance-Using-Sharp-IR-Sens/

An idea of what you are talking about and what can be done: http://www.nightingalesecurity.com/ or this http://www.aptonomy.com/

How would you trigger the Drone to Fly ? Well maybe have a system in which a remote sensor is triggered using the SIGFOX network (Again B4R and Arduino). Send this to a back end close to the drone which sends a signal to the drone to fly to the "tripped area". More info here: https://www.sigfox.com/en.

Once your drone reaches the target - how do you take an image and process it ? - Do you have enough processing power on your "bird" to do this computation ? or do you send it to a B4J/B4A back end (via a 5.4gHz FPV connection) - compute it and send a signal back to the "bird" to take a certain action ? Here is an example of what can be done: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/t...ction-examples-by-moster67-and-friends.80593/

I trust that the above will get your interest.

Have fun !!

 

[udg]

@BillMeyer : many many thanks. A lot to read..but it's what I asked for