HACKFLIGHT

A Simple Software Ecosystem for Miniature Aerial Vehicles

Dates: June 2016 – August 2016

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Groups involved: Research with Dr. Simon Levy in the Computer Science department at Washington and Lee University

W&L Computer Science - https://www.wlu.edu/computer-science

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GitHub Link: https://github.com/simondlevy/Hackflight

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Background: 

Most drone hobbyists use plug-and-play, closed sourced Miniature Aerial Vehicles (MAVs), and the open sourced firmware for the more technically-savvy have over 10,000 lines of code. Hackflight is a project designed to simplify code and hardware to understand how MAVs (drones) work.

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Project Details:

Researched 3D SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) using ultrasonic sensors for mini quadcopter drone and V-REP robotics simulator, programming in Python, C++, and Lua. Added framework for multiple controllers like Xbox and PS3 controllers to be used in the developed V-REP simulation. Added a python computer vision board to the simulation scene and designed a First-Person-View (FPV) using the flight controller simulation framework.

Programmed variety of sensors on Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and STM32 microcontroller boards. Presented Hackflight drone and simulator firmware at Intercollegiate Dronefest at Colgate University.

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Presentation:

Levy, S., Hidalgo Lopez, J., Lubas, M., Rwagaju, A. (2016, August 18). Hackflight: A Simple Software Ecosystem for Miniature Aerial Vehicles. Presented research at Intercollegiate Dronefest at Colgate University. (http://home.wlu.edu/~levys/presentations/Hackflight.pdf)