This is an old post from December 2007 which got lost while I was reshuffling my website, but thanks to the wonders of Google Caching, here it is again, updated a bit of course.
Mid 2007, I picked myself up a tiny R/C Helicopter in Hong Kong, the Walkera 5-6 Genius, as pictured here.
Walkera 5-6 Genius
After several weeks of crashing it into random objects around my apartment, I “sort of” figured out how to fly it. Not a bad little toy. Now the gears are spinning in my head.. Why can’t I make this autonomous?
I’ve been laying out the circuit for a tiny autopilot, with full 6 degree of freedom IMU and a tiny GPS and altimeter for sensors. I haven’t quite decided on the brains for the MUAV, but right now I’m leaning towards an FPGA. I think the reconfigurability and power derrived from an FPGA outweighs the increased power consumption for this particular application, as it will allow for some more complicated functions to be implemented in the future.
Several ideas are bumping around in my head right now for indoor navigation (more effectively, making it smart enough to not smash into walls), but apart from small rudimentary IR reflection sensors, other options are too heavy (Sharp IR Range finders) or too complicated (Machine Vision) to workout without a lot more thought.
Since the origional posting, I have managed to strip the drive gears on the chopper from excessive crashing (oops). Luckily I have found a source for spare parts, so I’ll have to order some up. But, in the process I found another nice tiny Helicopter that would be neat to make Autonomous, the Buzz Fly SE. Unfortunatley, all the UAV stuff is on the backburner for me, as my Quadruped is my current main project.