Alright, first words of my blog for the Autonomous Aerial Drone Simulator project.
The project is part of my Masters thesis in computer technology, which starts this fall and ends next spring. The simulator will feature a simplified physics environment for aerial vehicles, in particular a model for small radiocontroller helicopters will be implemented. Using the simulator it is possible to see how control logic performs in an approximation to reality, and adjust accordingly. It is so much cheaper to crash in virtual life. :-)
Eager to start I have already implemented some initial code for simple physics and helicopter behavior. It works pretty well even without considering air physics, and the helicopter can be controlled using a regular R/C helicopter joystick with a PC cable that ships with most helicopter models. This actually turned out to be a decent R/C simulator to practice flying those things in.
I have also implemented some initial control logic for navigating to a waypoint. Using PID loops (the I is not very much used yet) adjusted to the environment, and using perfect knowledge of position, velocity, forces and orientation of the helicopter the autopilot is by now able to:
- Hover
- Navigate to a waypoint with nose pointing in arbitrary direction
- Come to a halt at a waypoint
- Navigate with intermediate waypoints by passing through them
Although it can't land yet, it has infinitely amounts of fuel so it shouldn't be a problem in the near future.
In the screenshot above you can see the visual presentation so far. Although the graphics is not a focus in the project, I gotta admit it is hard to give a crap too. I will probably add quite more details as the project progresses and I tire of coding control logic and AI.
