Quadrotor Autonomous Flight and Obstacle Avoidance with Kinect Sensor

More info: http://hybrid.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bouffard/kinect.html

This work is part of the STARMAC Project in the Hybrid Systems Lab at UC Berkeley (EECS department). http://hybrid.eecs.berkeley.edu/

Researcher: Patrick Bouffard
PI: Prof. Claire Tomlin

Our lab's Ascending Technologies [1] Pelican quadrotor, flying autonomously and avoiding obstacles.

The attached Microsoft Kinect [2] delivers a point cloud to the onboard computer via the ROS [3] kinect driver, which uses the OpenKinect/Freenect [4] project's driver for hardware access. A sample consensus algorithm [5] fits a planar model to the points on the floor, and this planar model is fed into the controller as the sensed altitude. All processing is done on the on-board 1.6 GHz Intel Atom based computer, running Linux (Ubuntu 10.04).

A VICON [6] motion capture system is used to provide the other necessary degrees of freedom (lateral and yaw) and acts as a safety backup to the Kinect altitude--in case of a dropout in the altitude reading from the Kinect data, the VICON based reading is used instead. In this video however, the safety backup was not needed.

[1] http://www.asctec.de
[2] http://www.microsoft.com
[3] http://www.ros.org/wiki/kinect
[4] http://openkinect.org
[5] http://www.ros.org/wiki/pcl
[6] http://www.vicon.com

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Robot
• Quadrotor
• STARMAC
• Kinect
• Berkeley
• ROS

[BigBass992]

next stop: MANHACKS!!

[Silverhairedmage]

Hello Skynet, my killer kinnect machine keeps targeting the neighbors cat

[MrJmfitch]

awesome

[roidroid]

@BigGunz357 lol

[BigGunz357]

@roidroid Yeah, I really don't need to. The first letter of an aircraft identification shows its mission, such as F for fighter, B for bomber, C for cargo, K for refueler, and A for attack. I have never in my life heard of an FB-XXX. Yeah, fighters can drop bombs, but they're still fighters.

[retron23]

I assume the CPU was made by Cyberdyne Systems. Skynet has become self-aware, for like the third time.

[david1991rules4life]

@roidroid i am not sure, 8 months ago, i wud've had teh song in my head but can't describe now since i forgot :S

[roidroid]

@CaptainRon1913 In the 1960s some fullsized quadrotor aircraft were constructed that could carry half a ton of payload each.

I mean, since it apparently doesn't matter which quadrotor we're talking about (!?)

[CaptainRon1913]

@roidroid All due respect, which you seem to have none of, the 500g payload is a base machine. Add the "box" (or any other sensor system) which Berkley has in this video, you have virtually 0 payload left. Doesn't matter which quadrotor your talking about.

[roidroid]

@CaptainRon1913 Uuh no, what you have just done there is googled some random Texan university's quadrotor project. What's wrong with you. The quadrotor in THIS video is called the "AscTec Pelican" and here are the spec's from the company's website: max speed 50 km/h max windload 36 km/h max flight time 20 mins GPS aided MEMS Gyro Sensors 2 x ARM7 micro processor Modular tower design Suitable for ATOM processor board 500g Payload

[CaptainRon1913]

@roidroid The wonderful thing about being pragmatic and logical is realizing something like this can't possibly have a 1 lb payload. I looked up the specs, and here they are. Cut and pasted... (250grams is about 8.8 oz.)

Weight(including the battery and the electronics) 1.25 Kg

Battery time while hovering 15 min (150W power consumption)

Payload about 250 g

Dimensions almost square with sides of 0.5m

Radio communication range 150m indoor, 800m outdoor

[roidroid]

@CaptainRon1913 "i don't believe".

the wonderful thing about evidence, is that you don't need faith either way. It's right there in the quadrotor's official specs