Topic: 2x Crazyflie Brushless 2.1 Ai bundle
Proposal type: Hardware , Software , Other : _________________
Description:
Requesting funding for 2x BitCraze Crazyflie 2.1 brushless autonomous bundle
I am looking to address the absence of a true, self-contained autonomous micro-UAV suitable for indoor flight without the need for custom hardware. The drone should be available off the shelf with little setup, not require any other infrastructure, and work with standard ArduPilot autonomous features. The closest I have seen recently is this impressive work from Intelligent Quads - ArduPilot Tiny Whoop and of course tpwrules’ M5 stampfly build, however both of these require control provided by a GCS or radio controller and some kind of external reference for state estimation, provided by GPS or a mocap scheme.
I have been working to contribute a nearly full-featured ArduCopter implementation on a micro-copter platform, suitable for low risk indoor flight that makes use of widely available and well supported hardware. This builds off previous work that attempted to support the BitCraze Crazyflie 2.1 platform Ardupilot Blog - Crazyflie goes ArduPilot (June 2020). We developed new drivers to fully support Mavlink telemetry over the built in NRF radio, the optical flow deck (camera + ToF ranger), and their companion computer Ai Deck for autonomous mission scripting on old hardware we had in my lab, all OEM and still available to purchase. It worked, but we simply could not overcome the limitations imposed by the stock propulsion without significant FC software optimization that would bring us away from “stock” ArduCopter. I reached out to the BitCraze team and they were kind enough to donate one 2.1 brushless kit after we demonstrated what we had.
And it works great! However, within a couple of weeks of heavy use we suffered a set back from a loss of control leading to damage on one ESC. So, I’d like to request funding for two (2) of these, such that we have redundant hardware on hand and to allow us to develop decentralized, coordinated flight scripting examples.
I believe many researchers, new users and students would like to learn flying with ArduPilot and want to experiment with autonomous flight features, however outdoor flight has inherently high operational hurdles that must be overcome in order to conduct safe, lower risk test. The hope here is that we can provide a convenient in-between that and simulation with SITL, since this build will let the community experiment with state estimation, mesh networking, mission scripting with little setup. Further, this would increase the accessibility for those who want to test out networking for coordinated flight on real hardware in lab settings.
Full documentation of the build, test examples, configuration will be contributed in the coming months once we finish the work.
Planned amount $$ (USD): 1823.16 USD
1602.61 for 2x bundles + 220.55 tax and customs fee