Senior Project Fun

24 Sep 2009

I'm a senior this year which means that I get to complete a senior project. I decided that for my project I'm going to build an autonomous quadrotor from scratch. My full project proposal can be found here.

I'm going to document the whole process on this blog, so let's get to it!


System Overview


First, let me provide a quick run-down of the system I intend to develop:

  • The system will fly autonomously
  • APIs in C and Python will be developed to control the quadrotor
  • The quadrotor will be constrained to vertical motion see below
  • Onboard avionics: AVR microcontroller for flight control, MaxBotix sonar rangefinder for altitude estimation, 4 brushless motors (driven by ESCs which will be controlled by the AVR), and an XBee wireless module for the data link to the ground control station.



I just finished building a guide-wire system that the quadrotor will fly on.



The guide-wire system




The actual wire



Sonnie demonstrating the guide-wire system

That's it for now! The avionics shipped from sparkfun today so stay tuned for some zigbee+avr+sonar madness!!!!
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