ECE 477: Digital Systems Senior Design v1.0

Initial Project Proposal

Year: 2014 Semester: Fall Project Name: Extreme Sports UAVCreation Date: April, 2014 Last Modified: May 6, 2023

Team Members:

Member 1: Yuhao Chen Email: chen902@purdue.edu Member 2: Xianzhe Zhou Email: zhou196@purdue.eduMember 3: Yuchen Cui Email: cui27@purdue.eduMember 4: Enpei Xi Email: exi@purdue.edu

1.0 Description of Problem:

Extreme sport activities are physically challenging and visually stunning. Because of their inherent danger and physical requirements, there is not a cost effective way to fully video record the activities for individual extreme sport enthusiasts. Current ways of recording extreme sport activities include follow-up helicopters, camera-equipped safety helmets, fixed point cameras, smartphones, or in some cases, pair up camerists. These video recording methods all have their limitations in terms of cost, safety, or video quality. These limitations affect every extreme sport enthusiast.

2.0 Proposed Solution:

In order to give extreme sport enthusiasts a cost effective and safe way to fully video record their own activities, our team proposes to design a UAV that follows an extreme sport performer and video record his/her entire activity. A commercial UAV, including the controlling module, will be purchased to serve as the intelligent carrier of the video recorder. The commercial UAV should be able to make turns and to float in air in a stable manner. An autopilot system will be developed using programmable chip(s) to integrate into the UAV control system:

a. The UAV will have the ability to perform auto takeoff and landing. b. GPS will be integrated and communicate to a smartphone to track the general location of a

user, assuming the user carries the smartphone when performing an activity. c. As the UAV approaches the target, close up automatic navigation system will be utilized

to rotate the UAV and to point the camera to the user. Possible solutions to the close up navigation system can be either using an infrared sensor to detect the user or detecting a beaker carried by the user.

d. A video recorder or camera will be mounted on the UAV to video record. e. There will be a battery alarming system to prevent the UAV from unexpected falling due

to power outage.

https://engineering.purdue.edu/ece477 Page 1 of 5

ECE 477: Digital Systems Senior Design v1.0

3.0 ECE477 Course Requirements Satisfaction

3.1 Expected Microcontroller Responsibilities

A microcontroller will be used to serve as a communication interface between the UAV and its user. The microcontroller will interface with the UAV flight controller to provide flight instruction based on the user’s location. The microcontroller will also make use of a GPS, a computer vision module and range detectors to calculate positions and movements.

3.2 Expected Printed Circuit Responsibilities

Our Printed Circuit Board will incorporate the microcontroller, a Bluetooth module, a radio receiver, a voltage control module and interfaces to other peripherals such as the flight controller, range detectors, power supply and the GPS module.

4.0 Market Analysis:

Our project will be a solution to extreme sport activity recording. It reduces the safety concern, which allows the users to fully focus on sports performance. In addition, our autonomous UAV system will be affordable to extreme sport enthusiasts since all the software platforms we use are open-source.

Therefore, in terms of potential market, our project is targeting the expanding niche market that consists of extreme sports enthusiasts such as rock-climbers and mountain climbers. There is no exact number of extreme sports enthusiasts reported, however, according to A. Mozes [1], there are more than 4 million injuries linked to extreme sports since 2000 and now extreme sports cause 40,000 head and neck injuries annually, from which one can infer how large the number of active extreme sports enthusiasts there are.

5.0 Competitive Analysis:

5.1 Preliminary Patent Analysis5.1.1 Patent #1: Europe Patent Application EP1901153 A1

Patent Title: Control system for unmanned 4-rotor-helicopterPatent Holder: OFFIS e.V.Patent Filing Date: Sep. 12, 2006

This patent [2], assigned to OFFIS, will be mainly used by miniature quadrotor helicopter. The advantage of this invention is it takes into consideration when the sensors cannot be perfectly mounted in center of gravity, or the center of gravity is initially shifted out of the origin, the system can still fix the coordinate frame. The primary disadvantage is, although it was demonstrated successfully outdoors, this invention was designed basically for indoor surveillance purpose and in an indoor setting.

https://engineering.purdue.edu/ece477 Page 2 of 5

ECE 477: Digital Systems Senior Design v1.0

5.1.2 Patent #2: China Patent Application CN 203127141 U

Patent Title: Multi-rotor wing unmanned aerial vehiclePatent Holder: Shenzhen Dajiang Innovation Technology Co., Ltd.Patent Filing Date: Dec 13, 2012

This patent [3], assigned to Shenzhen Dajiang Innovation Technology Co., will be mainly used in a multi-rotor flying vehicle. The patent solves the sensor interferences issue by providing a housing that separates the circuit board and motor, therefore, reducing noise. The primary disadvantage of this patent is that extra loading will be added to the multi rotor that consumes extra power for flying which results in reduce flight times. Although reducing noise is one of our goals, it is not the primary goal of our project. Constructing a housing to improve noise reduction is in our considerations.

5.1.3 Patent #3: U.S Patent Application US 8265808 B2

Patent Title: Autonomous and automatic landing system for dronesPatent Holder: Patrick Garrec, Pascal CornicPatent Filing Date: Dec 1, 2006

This patent [4] is related to drone landing guidance. It utilizes electromagnetic detecting and locating devices, which use a beacon for continuous wave transmission to improve the angular position of the drone. The information transmitted by the beacon also optimizes the landing path. The invention might be applied to our automatic takeoff and landing system.

5.2 Commercial Product Analysis:

5.2.1 Commercial Product #1: AR Drone 2.0

AR Drone 2.0 [5] is a very competitive commercial product. It is controlled by a portable mobile device, such as a smart phone, and has a 720p HD camera. It is designed for people to have fun flying a quadcopter. For electronics, AR Drone uses a 1GHz 32-bit ARM Cortex A8 processor with the Linux operating system. 1Gbit DDR2 RAM is used for speeding up the calculations. Also, standard quadcopter sensors are used, such as accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, pressure sensor, and ultrasonic sensor. However, Wi-Fi is the only communication between the user and the quadcopter. For hardware AR Drone uses carbon fiber tubes and fiber charged nylon plastic parts to reduce the weight. The total weight is 380g. Along with small weight, AR Drone uses 4 brushless motors with 14.5W 28,500 RPM to fly high and fast. Detail specifications are provided on the AR Drone website. Overall, AR Drone is a good product of playing for fun. Communication through Wi-Fi is a downside for users who fly the drone outdoors with no Wi-Fi access.

https://engineering.purdue.edu/ece477 Page 3 of 5

Figure 5.2.1: AR Drone with detailed view

Figure 5.2.2: DJI Phantom 2

Figure 5.2.3: XP2 overview

ECE 477: Digital Systems Senior Design v1.0

5.2.2 Commercial Product #2: DJI Phantom 2 Vision

DJI Phantom 2 Vision [6] is a camera-carrying quadcopter controlled by a radio controller operating at 5.728 – 5.85 GHz and its 1080p camera is controlled by a portable mobile device. It is designed with photography in mind. Phantom 2 lacks publically available hardware and electronics specifications. Phantom 2 weights 1060g. Detail information is provided on the AR Drone websites. Overall, Phantom 2’s functional objective is quite similar to ours but it does not have any autopilot system that our proposed design targets at.

5.2.3 Commercial Product #3: XP2 Quadcopter

XP2 Quadcopter [7] is a commercial product for professional video recording. It is controlled remotely via RF communication. Some accessories and attachments are available. XP2 also lacks publically available hardware and electronics specifications .XP2 weights 435g. Detailed information is provided on the XP2 website. Overall, XP2 is not as competitive as previous products. It’s a general quadcopter with attachable camera.

5.3 Open Source Project Analysis:

5.3.1 Open Source Project #1: MultiWiiCopter

The MultiWiiCopter [8] is an open source flight control system aiming to provide the brain of an RC controlled multi-rotor flying platform. It is compatible with several hardware boards and sensors. The system supports configurations from bicopter to octocopter. When associated with an accelerometer, MultiWii is able to drive 2 servos for PITCH and ROLL gimbal system adjustment. This open source project is most valuable to us because we are going to use this very system as our flight control unit for our quadcopter. We determined to use this system because the complete functionality and stability have been demonstrated through various projects online, such as the MultiWii quad shown in Figure 5.3.1.

https://engineering.purdue.edu/ece477 Page 4 of 5

Figure 5.3.1: MultiWii Project

ECE 477: Digital Systems Senior Design v1.0

5.3.2 Open Source Project #2: MikroKopters

MikroKopters [9] is universal aerial platform. On October 24th, 2006, Holger Buss and Ingo Busker brought MK to life with a great community of Mikrokopter pilots. 6 months later, the Mikrokopter hovered steadily. A short time later, accessories were added. It is now able to perform semi-autonomous flights. The Mikrokopter is capable of carrying the weight of a GoPro camera. For more competitive pilots the Mikrokopter offers enough agility to fly loops (over pitch and roll-axes). The mechanical design of Mikrokopter is of great interest to our team because our quadcopter is going to carry a camera to fulfill its tasks similar to Mikrokopter. We are going to adapt both the software and hardware design of this project into ours and make it a fully autonomous quadcopter.

5.3.3 Open Source Project #3: Crazyflie

Crazyflie [10] is a small quadcopter that stated with a simple idea: get an electronic board to fly. The Crazyflie quadcopter was started late 2009 as a competence development project in the Swedish consulting company Epsilon AB in which all three of the original designers were employed. They then set up a website for the project where all the software and hardware design are open and a good amount of design logs and documents are available for users to study. The mechanics of this project is very different from ours due to the different size of designs. However, the software algorithms are very useful to us, in which we would specifically look into its implementation of wireless communication between the quadcopter and the ground station.

6.0 Sources Cited:

[1] A. Mozes (2014). ‘Exreme Sports’ Linked to 40,000 Head and Neck Injuries per year. Available: http://consumer.healthday.com/general-health-information-16/injury-health-news-413/extreme-sports-linked-to-40-000-head-and-neck-injuries-per-year-685660.html

[2] M. Kemper (2006). Control system for unmanned 4-rotor-helicopter. Available: https://www.google.com/patents/EP1901153A1

[3] T. Wang (2012). Multi-rotor wing unmanned aerial vehicle. Available: https://www.google.com/patents/CN203127141U

[4] Garrec, Patrick. "Patent US8265808 - Autonomous and Automatic Landing System for Drones - Google Patents." Google Books. U.S Patent Office, 1 Dec. 2006. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.

[5] Parrot AR. Drone 2.0 (2012). AR.Drone 2.0 Parrot new wi-fi quadricopter Technical Specifications State of the Art Technology. Available: http://ardrone2.parrot.com/ardrone-2/specifications/

[6] DJI The Future of Possible (2014). Phantom 2 Vision - Tech Specs. Available: http://www.dji.com/product/phantom-2-vision/spec

[7] XPROHELI (2014). XP2 Quadcopter Professional Aerial photo and video multirotor platform. Available: http://xproheli.com/

[8] MultiWii (2014) MultiWii.com. Available: http://www.multiwii.com/[9] MikroKopter (2006) MikroKopter.de Available: http://www.mikrokopter.de/en/home[10] Bitcraze (2009) Crazyflie | Bitcraze. Available: http://www.bitcraze.se/

https://engineering.purdue.edu/ece477 Page 5 of 5