The gang at Bitcraze is at it again, this time developing Leap Motion control for their Crazyflie quadcopter, as well as releasing a Kinect-driven autopilot proof of concept. If you haven’t seen the Crazyflie before, you may not realize how compact it is: 90mm motor to motor and only 19 grams.
As far as we can tell, the Crazyflie still needs a PC to control it, so the Leap and Kinect are natural followups. Hand control with the Leap Motion is what you’d expect: just imagine your open palm controlling it like a marionette, with the height of your hand dictating thrust. The Kinect setup looks the most promising. The guys strapped a red ball to the Crazyflie that provides a trackable object against a white backdrop. The Kinect then monitors the quadcopter while a user steers via mouse clicks. Separate PID controllers correct the roll, pitch and thrust to reposition the Crazyflie from its current coordinates to a new setpoint chosen by a click or a drag. Videos of both Leap and Kinect piloting are below.
Tight on cash but still want to take to the skies? We have two rubber-band-powered devices from earlier this week: the Ornithopter and the hilariously brilliant GoPro Slingshot.
Thats Awesome. First
There’s something smaller than that! Check out the multiWii Femto(duino) tri-copter uploaded to YouTube by phineasIV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1pavL3uvTw
It’s under 19 grams (18.9), is 40 mm less (it’s 50mm motor to motor), and flies like a loud bee.
Though in all fairness, it doesn’t have leap motion integration just yet. :0)
You should really build yourself a proper PCB for that project, It performs very nice considering all the excess weight it’s having to carry around.
Hi,
multiwii Femto(duino) Tri Copter II 20g (PID Tuning): http://youtu.be/JbXyk6UADBs
multiwii Femto(duino) Tri Copter II 20g (Outdoor) : http://youtu.be/oacVziO6ie4
Regards, Èric
Yeah, but can he do THIS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp89tTDxXuI
Why wouldn’t it? That’s a software thing. :-)
I’m certain he could. That’s software control. The hardware isn’t radically different from other quad/tri copters… besides the small size. Don’t get me wrong… the Crazyflie is a wonderful piece of engineering. But there are smaller copters out there.
Where is the sourcecode?????
Republicou isso em Julio Della Flora.