Controlling A Quadcopter With A Leap Motion

A few folks over at National Instruments going under the name LabVIEW Hacker have gotten their hands on a Leap Motion dev kit. The Leap is an interesting little input device designed to track fingertips in 3D space, much like a Kinect but at much higher resolution. Needing something to show off their LabVIEW prowess, these guys controlled their office AR Drone with the Leap, making a quadcopter controller that is completely touchless.

Building on their previous AR Drone hack, the LabVIEW team spent the better part of a day adding wrappers around the Leap SDK and adding in control for their RC quadcopter. Now, simply by moving their fingertips over the Leap sensor, they can control their office quadrotor using a very high-resolution 3D scanner.

Video after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoiwL0SK3jA&w=470]

13 thoughts on “Controlling A Quadcopter With A Leap Motion

    1. That’s why I believe developers should focus on tracking individual fingers and their gestures, rather than the whole palm. This way you could rest your hand on the surface of your desk (or some cushion), pretty much the same as you do with the keyboard – notice your fingers are up in the air above the keyboard most of the time.

        1. I’m talking about interacting with the PC, not resting. When you type, your fingers move in the air between keys and this doesn’t produce too much fatigue.. So similarly formed gestures (fingers moving in the air while the lower arm and the base of the palm rests on the support) could be used for controls.
          I dream of twin Leap Motion setup (one for each hand) for 3D modeling. And you could even use it for typing/writing too. Other controllers are not needed at this point….

    1. Indeed, I just about fell off my chair when Analog Devices ciio module auto loaded on the Debian kernel I had.

      Labview is from an age where many engineers spoke VB, and over charging $900 for a $20 interface card was still considered a viable business.

      NOP in Peace

  1. Hi there !
    I am a student from France
    I have to do the same project with my team. Our drone is the VLTOYS V262 (which is also a quadcopter). We have the Leap device also.
    Can I have more information about how to start the project plz?
    Our teacher recommend us to program it in Python. Is that a good idea ?
    I mean in which language do you programmed yours?
    (PS : As I said before, I am from France so forgive me for my english ;)

  2. Hi there !
    I am a student from France. I have to do the same project with my team. Can I have more information about how to start. Our teacher recommend us to program it in Python. Is that a good idea?
    I mean in which language do you program yours?
    (PS : As I said before I am from France so forgive me for my english ;)

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