subject: As Linux-powered helicopters take off [print this page] unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) are now becoming more intelligent and are able to perform increasingly difficult tasks. They can help find people in remote environments, or take a dangerous place.
Nicolas Roy, the solid Robotics Group at MIT, leads the team that designed quadcopter that won the International Robotics Competition in the airline last year. And guess what? It works on Linux.
Magazine caught up with him for an interview
Linux Format: Tell us about your UAV. Where did the idea originally?
Nicholas Roy: We started about three years ago. Ruijie He, who was a student at the time he started working with me on this crazy idea, we had a helicopter, equipped with a laser rangefinder, fly through the open door. It was RJ draft study, and we made many mistakes along the way, which were very educational.
The following summer, we contacted Ascending Technologies, who are the vehicles for us. Their vehicles are stable, durable and easy to work, so that was a huge step forward. Abraham Bachrach, Sam Prentice and Garrett Hemann joined the project shortly after, and that critical mass, began to make rapid progress.
LXF: quadcopter is much more complex than a helicopter or plane. Is there a market for them?
NO: This is a mistake to say that quadrotors are more complex. There are advantages and disadvantages of each air vehicle design, from the time the wing to traditional vehicles quadrotor helicopter to helicopter.
advantage for us to use the helicopter is able to activate, which flank the time the vehicle can not do, unless the prop-hang. The complexity of vehicle control quadrotor compared to conventional helicopter is not so much the function of the vehicle, what you do with it.
LXF: So, why have you decided to stick quadrotor project, not a squirrel?
NO: Project quadrotor provided by Ascending Technologies is a simpler, more stable and easier to control than the conventional design. Growth naturally limits the dynamic stability of the vehicle, but the current limits of our sensors means that you probably can not control or recover from the maneuver was still very high dynamics. Were working on it.
LXF: What causes your UAV?
NO: Our air vehicles and their propulsion machinery were designed by Ascending Technologies in Germany. Order the equipment they build for us is perfect, and they deserve 100% credit.
There are four electric motors, one for each rotor. If different speed engines, the vehicle will pitch or roll cages. You control the height of the vehicle, which in turn generates momentum.
No 1.6GHz Atom-based PC with an SD card, which communicates with a serial link ARM-based microcontroller. Then there is a Wi-Fi link to your computer based on Atom.
LXF: Why have you chosen Linux?
NO: Two main reasons are, first, that we have a large code, which arose at the time. Our code control helicopter comes with a package of a ground vehicle is available in http://carmen.sourceforge.net .
open-source nature of Linux gives us a lot of clarity when working with hardware such as microcontrollers and sensors of the vehicle. During the interaction with the hardware is not working properly, its nice to be able to trace the drivers and see what happens.
