swissless - Drone Project

Inspiration

In hazardous situations, autonomous machines can be of great help: in am emergency nuclear leakage situation, the autonomous drone is to maneuver through the walls and find out which generator is the broken one (denoted by red light).

What it does

The autonomous drone will begin its operation with the switching on of the green light. Then, with a PID regulator, the drone programmed in RaspberryPi adjusts in space height and distance to safely hover in the air. Now the drone is ready to go into the danger zone to find out which one of the three power generators is the broken one. As the broken generator is marked with red light, and the operating ones in green, by taking panoramic image of the scene, the drone correctly detects which one the three generator is the broken one.

How I built it

With extensive use of RaspberryPi programmed with Python, we implemented PID regulators for a safe maneuver and image processing to correctly differentiate between green and red light. Then, using panoramic view analysis, the broken generator will be detected.

Challenges I ran into

Calibration of the drone for the fine maneuver to let it hover in the air was very challenging. Also, establishing connection between RaspberryPi and laptops at times.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We were able to execute our algorithms for autonomous maneuver like using PID regulators for creating a feedback loop and various image processing algorithms to detect the source of red and green light. The team work between the three of us to correctly implement our strategy was one of the biggest feats this weekend.

What I learned

We learned that establishing connections between different components (between RaspberryPi and laptops, etc.) can be very difficult. Also, we have realized that having drones afloat in the air in a stable position requires very many fine calibration runs.

What's next for swissless

As we are hardware and software enthusiasts, we will continue to invest our time in discovering different skills related to electronics.