BOB4 - Autonomous indoor helicopter UAV

BOB4 is a small UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) designed for indoor flights. It can fly autonomously, without any human help. It is made with a standard co-axial helicopter. All the electronics is custom made. I designed the electronics myself. The software is also 100% home made, and I did not re-use any code found on the web.

This project is quite complex, but I learned a lot of things with it.

I chose a small coaxial helicopter because I wanted to fly indoor. It is convenient for developping the code whenever I want, during day or night, whether it rains or not.

General desciption :

Mechanics:

• weight: 300g
• Span : 340mm
• Helicopter : bi-rotor coaxial LAMA V3 (e-sky)
• autonomy : up to 10 minutes

Electronics:

• Motherboard : Embedded Master (GHI Electronics)
• Radio : bi-directional Bluetooth Free2Move F2M03GX
• battery : LiPo 11.1V 750mAh

Sensors:

• 4 sonars SRF02
• Analogical Inertial Measurement Unit
• 3D compass HMC5843
• Wii-Remote camera

Algorithms:

• 3D position and orientation estimation
• 3D control : 4 independents PID
• Simple path construction