New IARC Presentation Videos!

Look for them under the videos page.

Notes from IARC 2009 – continued…

Individual Paper Presentations:

Low Cost Guidance Navigation Presentation (Gerogia Tech)

• Video Link
• Claim to be first to use Matlab and RC transmitter together for rapid controls development

Embry Riddle

• Video Link
• Small camera
• xbee, most processing offboard

AUVSI Rankings for Best Robotics Schools

• Contact Director of Knowledge, invite to Waterloo

MIT

• (See presentation videos on the videos page)
• One propeller/motor upside down, to clear way for camera. Rest are right way up, supposedly to keep centre of pressure high relative to centre of mass
• 1kHz operation, noisy IMU
• Trouble with visual odometry because of texture free walls, rely on lasers

Oregon State University

• Video Link
• I2C speed controller with 500 kHz refresh rate

PIMA

• Blimp

Georgia Tech 2nd Presentation (IA entry)

• Video Link
• Paper Link: An ILS Inspired Approach and Departure System Utilizing Monocular Vision by Christman and Johnson
• Similat to M. Tribou’s work?
• Uses LEDs, semi directional, low power

Other Notes

MIT, Georgia Tech and Embry Riddle are the only universities are the only teams flying this year

Lots of wind inside, because of narrow hallways

Obstacles like pedestal fans, chairs and hanging items from the cieling

Walls are paper

Georgia Tech Observations

• Team comprised of PhD’s, grad students and one professor
• 3 presentations, 2 of which were technical papers
• Simple, self stabilizing co-axial helicopter
• In aggressive maneuvers the two blades touch each other and break, happened very often during testing runs
• The arena at UPR has lots of sky lights, not exactly an IR friendly environment and the metal frame prevents any useful GPS use
• The common Sharp IR range sensors gave them problems
• The sonar altitude sensor, saw a chair obstacle as an increase in ground hieght, almost went through the roof, had to be intervened by a judge

MIT Observations

• Collaborated with a German startup (Ascending Technologies)
• Almost made it on the third try but the LIDAR saw the flapping wall and the localization failed. IARC judges reinforced the ‘wall’ with a metal frame for their next run

VT and OSU Observations

• Programmed and tested their quadrotors single axis at a time
• VT had a basic PID control structure with 8 analog sonars, 3DMG, will add LIDAR next year, used low frequency phoenix ESC’s
• OSU had a PD control loop with a high frequency I2C ESC