IoT & Hardware
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You're reading from  Designing Purpose-Built Drones for Ardupilot Pixhawk 2.1

Product typeBook
Published inDec 2017
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781786469168
Edition1st Edition
Tools
Ardupilot
Concepts
Robotics
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Author (1)
Ty Audronis
Ty Audronis
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Ty Audronis

Ty Audronis has been called a "technology-age renaissance man." Hes a professional drone pilot, post-production specialist in the entertainment and media industries, a highly experienced interactive game developer, and an accomplished digital artist. Hes worked for companies ranging from frog Design to California Academy of Sciences in roles where hes worn many hats. Tys been programming software and games since 1981 (when he was 8 years old) professionally. He majored in Computer Generated Animation and Visual Effects in college (where he won Best Animation for the entire CSU system a Rosebud Award). His music and sound design have been the soundtrack on several major productions; he has also served as a visual effects supervisor on feature films and was the supervising editor and animator for award-winning science visualizations. He has been building drones since the days when sensors and components had to be torn out of cell phones and game controllers. Ty is also a mentor, having taught many interns his skills, and speaks regularly at venues including Interdrone. He also serves on the advisory board for the Society of Aerial Cinematographers and for Genarts (now Boris) Sapphire.
Read more about Ty Audronis

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Using LIDAR to avoid obstacles

Would you like to go for a walk on a golf course blindfolded? No? Me neither, and it's probably not good to just set a rover to run around blind either. But vision and object recognition takes a lot more computing power than we're budgeted for on this machine. So, what's the next best thing to vision? SONAR or LIDAR. Unfortunately, SONAR (just like a bat finds insects using sound waves to calculate the distance to obstacles) is considered passé for Pixhawk, and thus the implementation is quite wonky. There are I2C sonar devices, but they don't work very well (if at all) with Pixhawk 2.1 and the latest Ardupilot firmware. So, we're going to use LIDAR instead. LIDAR rangefinders use light waves (instead of sound) to calculate the distance to objects.

LIDAR 101

LIDAR simply uses a light wave to send out, bounce off objects, and then looks for it to return. Since light travels at 299,792,458 m/s, all the LIDAR module has to do is measure the time it takes to return...

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Designing Purpose-Built Drones for Ardupilot Pixhawk 2.1
Published in: Dec 2017Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781786469168
© 2017 Packt Publishing Limited All Rights Reserved

Author (1)

author image
Ty Audronis

Ty Audronis has been called a "technology-age renaissance man." Hes a professional drone pilot, post-production specialist in the entertainment and media industries, a highly experienced interactive game developer, and an accomplished digital artist. Hes worked for companies ranging from frog Design to California Academy of Sciences in roles where hes worn many hats. Tys been programming software and games since 1981 (when he was 8 years old) professionally. He majored in Computer Generated Animation and Visual Effects in college (where he won Best Animation for the entire CSU system a Rosebud Award). His music and sound design have been the soundtrack on several major productions; he has also served as a visual effects supervisor on feature films and was the supervising editor and animator for award-winning science visualizations. He has been building drones since the days when sensors and components had to be torn out of cell phones and game controllers. Ty is also a mentor, having taught many interns his skills, and speaks regularly at venues including Interdrone. He also serves on the advisory board for the Society of Aerial Cinematographers and for Genarts (now Boris) Sapphire.
Read more about Ty Audronis

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