Demonstrations

This first flight demonstrates Drone 1 taking off in Loiter mode, which essentially allows the drone to hover when told to, or slightly increase or decrease its altitude while maintaining its position in terms of its x-y coordinates.

Loiter mode is very useful. The ability to maintain location will be very useful when attempting to keep a steady target to lock onto, which will drastically improve the reading from the detector.

This flight mode can also be handy when it comes to preliminary flights, both for new pilots and new drones. Loiter mode is recommended for new pilots due to the easy controls and lack of movement by the drone unless the command is given by the pilot.

This demonstration shows Drone 1 taking off in Stabilize Mode, and then switching to Loiter mode mid-flight. This video is more helpful in understanding what is occurring due to the audio queues that are present.

In the beginning, a deeper tone is playing, which indicates the drone is in the process of arming. Once armed, the motors begin to spin, and their speed increases depending on the amount of throttle given via the manual controller. Once given a sufficient throttle, the drone will take off in Stabilize mode. After a certain point, the flight mode is then switched to Loiter, indicated by the high pitch tone. The drone is then brought back towards the pilot and landed safely.

Stabilize mode will allow you to fly manually, but will automatically adjust the pitch and roll axes of the drone. Usually arming can only take place in Stabilize, although it is also possible to arm in Loiter mode. Additionally, a third mode is present, known as Guided mode. This mode will be used more once we are in the autonomous phase of flight, as Guided mode requires set waypoints that the drone follows.

This demonstration shows our system transmitting and receiving an optical signal, while also outputting the value to our ground station under a sonarrange reading.

The laser on Drone 1 is connected to a raspberry pi and has a dedicated script that blinks the signal on a five-second delay. The signal then travels to our photoresistor, where a basic circuit is designed to read the incoming signal. That signal is then converted to a digital signal and outputted to Mission Planner.

Please note that at the time of this recording, we did not yet have access to the photodiode we requested due to shipping constraints. As a result, we configured our circuit to sustain a basic photoresistor, which effectively acts as a photodiode in this case of just requiring the signal output.

This video was taken while we were measuring the distance at which Aruco Marker detection is viable. The distance at which we found detection to be viable was up to 4.25 meters. The method by which we determined the distance is due to be affected by some human error, although we do have a rough estimate of the distance.

We first moved away from the camera until we no longer saw the detection from the camera. We then used the size of a group member's shoe as a reference (US size 13), and that member began to take steps from the point of the camera to the point where the detection had stopped. We then used the size of the size and multiplied that by the number of steps taken in order to determine the total distance, which was roughly 4.25 meters.

Testing the Aruco Marker detection during the flight was key for our project, as it is the critical aspect of the Tx Drone's lock-on and aiming mechanism. In this instance, we were testing the raspberry pi camera's capability during flight.

The camera was mounted on our Tx drone, seen on the right, and connected to VNC Viewer via the main laptop. The Aruco Marker was attached to a DJI drone for the time being due to flight constraints at the time.

As you can see there is some inconsistency with the tracking. This is because of the angle the Aruco Marker was placed on the drone, and the actual marker itself, as there was a slight printing error with the Marker.

While establishing the initial reading is good for proof of concept, we wanted to have a method of reading the laser signal in real time, so that it was both simple to read the incoming signal strength, and easy to notice when the laser signal was no longer visible to the photodiode.

When the laser is turned on, you can see the real-time jump on the tuning graph within Mission Planner. The spike is indicative of the established laser to photodiode connection. Note that you can see very minimal spikes and drops at times in the video. This is due to the noise present around us in the form of ambient lighting. In the future, we would implement a noise filter on the photodiode circuit that would circumvent the noise.

This video showcases the DJI Tello Drone incorporating Aruco Marker tracking into its flight. The marker was attached to our Rx Drone and maneuvered through the air to show the Tello's lock-on.

The video is overlaid with a screen capture of the Tello drone's live video feed, showing the real time tracking of the Aruco marker as it moves during flight.

Please note that this demonstration is only a proof of concept. We are still working towards migrating this system to our actual drone. This is just to show what the system aims to achieve, with our drones utilizing this technique to track the receiver drone, aim the transmitter drone and send the laser signal.