Hello everyone. I would like to build copter with the ability to fly mission (mostly vertical movement) close to the building wall (vertical structure with flat surface without holes) without use of GPS. Drone should be able to have precise movement in centimeters. Is this possible with just rangefinders at bottom and forward?
Basically I would like to replicate this project of painting drone: https://carloratti.com/project/ufo/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPfzxERkv8o
Hi @CFKA,
I don’t think that the result will be good with just rangefinders because it needs to know it’s lateral position as well so that it doesn’t drift sideways.
If it were me I would try using a GPS to start with to see if that works. It might if a high quality modern GPS is used like the F9P. Another option is to use a ModalAI VOXL and then also attach a forward facing lidar and then maybe use a modified version of this wall-climbing lua script to maintain the distance from the wall.
Best of luck
GPS is really not an option as flights should be done also below big bridges.
An optical flow sensor should keep it reasonably still if there is a solid surface under it and combined with a forward rangefinder it should keep a set distance from the wall but its not something that would work automatically as it would still need some pilot input to fly.