Aerial Drones

For drone-based experimentation, DISCOVER employs several Modalai VOXL m500 quadcopters. The USA made m500 drones boast a flight time of approximately 25 minutes, up to 1 kg of payload, visual obstacle avoidance, visual inertial odometry, native ROS1 and Docker support, and several autonomous flight modes. As a part of Modalai’s provided VOXL SDK, the m500 drones are capable of running a variety of real-time object detection or classification TFlite models. We have enhanced the drones with Emlid RTK GPS systems for as high as centimeter-grade positioning precision during outdoor flights. The RTK corrections are sent between the drone and base station over LoRa radio, enabling accurate GPS positioning to remain even if WiFi fails. Our MAVROS based autonomous flight allows for several mission description methods. MAVROS allows users to calculate and program intricate, dynamic flight plans that take full advantage of the drone’s 3D mobility while also providing basic waypoint based flights for simpler missions. DISCOVER pilots are capable of manual flight for operations that do not require autonomous flight, allowing experimenters to choose which flight method works best for their experiment.