Teams compete in challenging robotic helicopter competition
lasers, two video cameras, three computers of varying complexity, a backup radio, an inertial measurement unit — or motion sensor — and a retractable spool of fishing line with a magnet as the bait.
The lasers scan the environment so the craft can map its surroundings. This is how it knows where the entry window is, and how it avoids crashing into the walls.
“It’s able to perceive the room and figure out where it is,” Bendes said. “Once it knows both what the room looks like, and where it is in the room, going to a specific place becomes much easier.”
The video cameras gather data for the image processing programs, which can identify signs as well as the prized flash drive.
The motion sensors keep tabs on the quadrotor’s flight angles and position, measuring the distance and direction it has traveled from the starting point. This is all important information for both navigating and staying stable, said Isaac Olson, a senior aerospace engineering major who heads the controls division.
The magnet’s role is to grab the flash drive. The spool is an attempt to avoid what happened last year, when the magnet dangled about eight inches from the belly of the craft.
“We caught something,” Bendes said. “A chair.”
The quadrotor broke free. Then it crashed into a wall.
The team still got more points than any of the teams because the judges determined its aircraft was the most autonomous. Autonomous air vehicles are designed to think for themselves, essentially. There is no human controlling them remotely (though this contest requires an override switch for emergencies).
The release notes that beyond military uses, they could one day be used to survey collapsed buildings or inspect hard-to-get-to parts of bridges and other infrastructure. An offshoot group from a previous team is working to commercialize the U-M technology through a startup called SkySpecs which inspects windmills.
The students said they were one of a few teams that build vehicles from the ground up. They worked with professors to get research versions of software and hardware, then they tweaked them and combined them into a truly unique system.
“Nothing within the world military or industrial arsenal of robots is able to complete the proposed mission at the time the guidelines are released,” according to the contest Web site.
The custom nature of the U-M quadrotor gives them an edge, team members say.
“We know this vehicle inside and out,” said Jose Gomez, a junior aerospace engineering major who leads the structures division. “We’re not black-boxed out of anything because we wrote the code. You get that warm, fuzzy feeling when it flies.”
“That’s pretty much a requirement for an aerospace engineer — when something you made flies,” Olson said.
The team got four tries to complete the mission on 7 August in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
“All we get to do,” Bendes said, “is turn it on, press the start button, step back and wait.”
Gizmag notes that the U-M team had been touted as the most likely entry at the American venue to succeed with Mission Six. Unfortunately, they suffered from equipment malfunctions and were unable to complete the mission.
The team from Tsinghua University in Beijin China has successfully completed the sixth mission of the competition, and was declared the winner. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Foundation awarded $40,000 to the Tsinghua THRONE team. The Tsinghua team’s vehicle performed much better that the vehicles designed by the thirty-one other competitors, representing seven nations, completing the tasks in under nine minutes.
A new mission challenge is now being devised for the debut of the Seventh Mission of the IARC in 2014, which will again occur simultaneously at the Asia/Pacific and American venues.
