William Thielicke | Automatic flight in GPS denied areas - MATLAB and Simulink Student Design Challenge 2013 @Willa1980 | Uploaded May 2013 | Updated October 2024, 3 minutes ago.
- Subtitle: How a biologist and technical computing became good friends -
My PhD project on the aerodynamics of bird flight required me to build a measurement setup from scratch. I needed several automatic robotic devices that could e.g. drive flapping wings or precisely position a laser sheet. Furthermore, I needed a software that can measure velocities in a fluid (this is called "Particle Image Velocimetry"). Therefore, during holidays and in preparation for the PhD project, I started to learn programming using MATLAB. At the same time, I began to develop a trirotor micro air vehicle (MAV) in order to learn how to work with robots and micro controllers. The video shows how I combined the MATLAB programming progress with the trirotor design: Four infrared LEDs are attached to the trirotor. A webcam is equipped with an infrared filter (made from an unexposed film reel) and attached to the ground respectively the ceiling of my living room. MATLAB tracks the position of the four LEDs and calculates yaw, height, x and y position, as well as velocity and acceleration for each parameter. The information is processed in four PID controllers. Finally, control signals are sent to the trirotor using a wireless serial link. It is possible to stabilize the trirotor in the centre of the camera field of view (FOV), or to make it follow a three-dimensional path in the FOV. Automatic take-off and landing was shown to work with a very good precision.
MATLAB and microcontrollers continued to fascinate me, even after I finished designing the setup for my PhD studies. With my MAVs, I managed to win many international and national competitions. The particle image velocimetry software that I programmed in MATLAB is today used by numerous universities and researchers. I am therefore really grateful that I had the opportunity to get to know MATLAB and technical computing. Biologist + technical computing = friends.
Both the micro air vehicle system and the Particle Image Velocimetry software are available as open source projects:
shrediquette.blogspot.de
mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/27659
- Subtitle: How a biologist and technical computing became good friends -
My PhD project on the aerodynamics of bird flight required me to build a measurement setup from scratch. I needed several automatic robotic devices that could e.g. drive flapping wings or precisely position a laser sheet. Furthermore, I needed a software that can measure velocities in a fluid (this is called "Particle Image Velocimetry"). Therefore, during holidays and in preparation for the PhD project, I started to learn programming using MATLAB. At the same time, I began to develop a trirotor micro air vehicle (MAV) in order to learn how to work with robots and micro controllers. The video shows how I combined the MATLAB programming progress with the trirotor design: Four infrared LEDs are attached to the trirotor. A webcam is equipped with an infrared filter (made from an unexposed film reel) and attached to the ground respectively the ceiling of my living room. MATLAB tracks the position of the four LEDs and calculates yaw, height, x and y position, as well as velocity and acceleration for each parameter. The information is processed in four PID controllers. Finally, control signals are sent to the trirotor using a wireless serial link. It is possible to stabilize the trirotor in the centre of the camera field of view (FOV), or to make it follow a three-dimensional path in the FOV. Automatic take-off and landing was shown to work with a very good precision.
MATLAB and microcontrollers continued to fascinate me, even after I finished designing the setup for my PhD studies. With my MAVs, I managed to win many international and national competitions. The particle image velocimetry software that I programmed in MATLAB is today used by numerous universities and researchers. I am therefore really grateful that I had the opportunity to get to know MATLAB and technical computing. Biologist + technical computing = friends.
Both the micro air vehicle system and the Particle Image Velocimetry software are available as open source projects:
shrediquette.blogspot.de
mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/27659
