Low Cost ROS based Semi-Autonomous Drone with Position and Altitude Lock

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Git Repo

In this project, I designed a quad copter which is cost effective and powered by ROS. The drone is capable of maintaining a constant altitude during hovering and a constant position for monitoring or surveillance. Robotic Operating System is implemented for trajectory tracking and telemetry. A low cost compact on-board embedded system powers the drone. Different controllers were implemented for position and altitude lock including PI and PID. The performance were compared and the results are also discussed in this paper.

As the team lead for the project I was responsible for the planning and execution of the project. I was also resonsible for the software and control system of the project.

The software system consist of QT-GUI, Control system is designed using arduino. I used ROS for communication and to gather sensor values from the drone for calculating trajectory and for navigation.

The System was equiped with a onboard microprocessor which was used for the collecting gps , gyro and other sensor values from the drone which is then transmitted to the base wih the help of ROS. These data where then processed in the base computer for several factors on which the trajectory is planned.