Schmankerl
Germany
Asked
— Edited
Hi everbody!
I'm a german student, trying to build an ar parrot drone, which can follow me automatically.
I found out, that you offer the Software ARC, which helps me to track a special coulour or a face with my ArDrone camera. I read that it is only designed for the 1.0 -version. Is there also the possibility to use it for the 2.0 ArDrone version?
Do you maybe have some advices how I could realize that my ArDrone follows me by GPS? The ArDrone is controlled by an App on my Smartphone. So GPS is available, so I could send my GPS coordinates to the ArDrone. But how can I make it, that the ArDrone can follow the coordinates and how can I send it to the drone?
Thanks in advance for your answer :-)
The 2.0 uses different encoding of the camera, there are currently no known plans to add this to ARC. Search the forum, this has been mentioned a few times recently.
Also, GPS is very inaccurate, or at least only accurate to, at the very best 1 meter. It wouldn't be accurate enough to produce satisfactory results in my opinion. However you can use EZ-Script commands to move a robot to a specific GPS coordinate.
EZB supports GPS, but I don't know how valuable that is since the EZB board has to be within range of ARC software running on your PC (wifi)... Meaning the range is maybe a couple of 100ft or so... Not good for walking around outdoors and out of WIFI range...
You would also need a GPS on the drone itself, and the carrying capacity of the Parrot is pretty small. You might be able to out a Bluetooth GPS on it, and if you stay within Bluetooth range of the parrot (and have an easily carry-able computer to be the brains), you might get it to work.
If we ever get camera on the Drone 2 supported in ARC, and easier method would be QR code recognition. Print out a big QR code and pin it to your back, and have teh drone follow it, and have a script which goes into a search pattern if it loses site of the code.
Still need to carry or stay within WiFi range of your computer, unless the upcoming iOS or Android versions of ARC are going to support video tracking features (known only to EZ-Robotics at this time).
Alan
Colour following would be better than QR
QR is obvious, colour not so much.
But color could be seen on someone else and suddenly your drone is following the wrong person.
I actually brought up an idea some time ago about being able to follow a specific blink pattern, and then use an IR LED with a simple circuit to produce the pattern.
A follow-me function is something I plan on building into my big bot when I get him built, so I have been thinking about this a lot. (He is going to be a robot dog, so I want him to follow closely to some identifier on my ankle or lower leg whenever I say "Heel").
The other thought is to use the single HAAR pattern recognizer to make something unique but innocuous to follow.
Alan
Plus if you print the QR code on a shirt it could be fashionable. I think QR would be the easiest.