Georgia Tech Lab Develops Micro Blimps for Indoor Navigation and Sensing

Georgia Tech Lab Develops Micro Blimps for Indoor Navigation and Sensing. (Featuring Dr. Fumin Zhang,http://www.gtsr.gatech.edu)

Introduction

The ability for vehicles to navigate unknown places is critical for autonomous operation. Mapping of a vehicle’s environment and self-localization within that environment are especially difficult for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) due to the complexity of UAV attitude and motion dynamics, as well as interference from external influences such as wind. By using a stable vehicle platform and taking advantage of the geometric structure typical of most indoor environments, the complexity of the localization and mapping problem can be reduced. Interior wall and obstacle location can be measured

Figure 1: Twin HD Cameras: BrainBox @ VAIRDO Inc.

using low-cost range sensors and smart computing micro cameras. Relative vehicle location within the mapped environment can then be determined. By alternating between mapping and localization, a vehicle can explore its environment autonomously. Work at Georgia Tech @ GTSR (http://www.gtsr.gatech.edu/) utilizes smart micro cameras and sensors for suitability in solving the mapping and localization problem. A control system and navigation algorithm are developed to perform mapping of indoor environments and localization. Simulation and experimental results are provided to determine feasibility of the proposed approach to indoor navigation.

Collaborative Work at Georgia Tech (Georgia Tech Systems Research Lab and VAirDo Inc.)

The Georgia Tech Systems Research (GTSR) Group has built biologically inspired robotic blimps that supports research and education in motion control, environmental mapping, and human robot interaction in three dimensional space. The GTSR group, Directed by Dr. Fumin Zhang, have produced several working prototypes of computer controlled aerial indoor blimp platforms that offer long flight and loiter times, and safe, stable, low noise operation. The GTSR blimp design balances speed and maneuverability in an indoor environment, with on board feedback control to achieve precision in 3D trajectory tracking. The blimps’ hardware and software systems were designed to support a variety of payloads  towards applications such as providing communication support, eyes in the sky (or on the ceiling), and guiding, mapping services for a broad scope of real world applications. The GTSR blimp has recently received a 3rd place award from the video contest of the IEEE control systems society:

 

Figure 2: OCURA, VAIRDO inc. – Wireless connectivity and Video Transmission

The blimps’ hardware and software systems were designed to be adaptable to support research on environmental sensing and human robot interaction. Robotic blimps are useful for providing communication support, eyes in the sky (or from the ceiling – indoors), and transportation services for a broad scope of real world applications. The main aim of indoor aerial navigation is to have precision while moving in a controlled manner, thus maintaining a stable hover requires continuous control updates. As such, a large number of previous research efforts have been dedicated to design and testing of automatic flight control algorithms designed to stabilize small aerial vehicles such as blimps.

Various flight control techniques used for this application include, but are not limited to, vision-only navigation and control using a UKF, loosely coupled GPS/INS integration using a UKF, and camera and IMU updates to a UKF for a trajectory generator; The camera and video are being relayed wireless to the ground station using theBrainBox package by Vairdo Inc.

Although the end goal is to autonomously navigate unknown GPS-denied environments, the first step is to build a model-based hover controller which utilizes an external optical tracking system recently installed in AFRL’s MAV-IFF.

The IFF uses motion capture cameras to provide accurate position and orientation information to a real-time controller which in turn relays commands through an RC transmitter to any off-the-shelf or uniquely-designed vehicle. This real-time motion capture facility is one of a handful in the US.
Other organizations using similar facilities for controller design and testing include MIT (Aerospace Controls Laboratory – RAVEN), Georgia Tech, and Boeing, which have produced useful results mostly within the past year.

BrainBox from VAIRDO Inc. powers the wireless video feed and The Ground station utilizes twin HD cameras for vision based applications; there is also a high speed Optical Flow camera available on the BrainBox for navigations and stabilization purposes for the blimps as an upgrade

Golden Quotes from Dr. Fumin Zhang

“Mobility poses great challenges to the Internet of Things when networked mobile agents are concerned. Distributed sensing and control will need to be coordinated through information exchange over flexible ad-hoc wireless networks to guarantee sustainable, reliable and affordable data streams flowing across the network. Insights into the coordination and decision making mechanisms used by animal groups serve as a source of inspiration for my research to solve these problems

The Various application of Blimps for aerial navigation are as under:

• Indoor Surveillance.
• Vision based Sensing Platform for Research Purposes.
• Miniaturized technology serving as a boon for defense and security.
• Low communication Links or Dynamic Routers.

Applications are many as the technology is under regular phase of evolution every now and then.

VAIRDO – Flying Micro

VAIRDO is in the business of providing custom and pre-configured miniaturized imu, computing, control and sensing platforms for industries from virtual reality smart weapons, compact mini drone sensor & controls, video monitoring and deployable sensors, Robotics, Unmanned systems, consumer electronics. Our markets are in the Military, R&D, consumer electronics and B2B solutions. “We pride ourselves in making the world’s most cutting edge, smart and compact sensor, electronics and control systems being used in applications involving computer vision, wireless telemetry and smart computing/sensing. Cutting edge robotics solutions to meet high demand autonomous hardware solutions on Land, Air and Water and can be efficiently used for microdrone, pocket drone, micro robotics, quadcopter, live streaming, aerial videography, auto pilot, indoor navigation, GPS flight etc. Our work covers complex aerodynamics, avionics, micro aerial vehicles, rethink robotics, bio-inspired projects, drones & UAVs, micro robotics, large alternate energy flying vehicles and much more. We breathe micro hardware, smart computing and innovative compact sensor and control solutions for various industries Robot brain to flying bots to consumer electronics, complex gear train systems, mathematics, dynamics and kinematical hardware systems, we have expertise to do it all. Android, Matlab applications

The heart of a full high-performance embedded development kit environment; size smaller than the palm of a hand; and performance matching Smartphones, Tablets and high computing mobile devices.

Gimbaled Stereo Camera with HD

Dual 5Mega pixel gimbaled 4K HD wireless Go pro cameras, useful for Long range Depth Estimation, 3D estimation, Onboard intelligence, mapping, gesture control, Headcount or rotating camera, stabilizing your selfie images/videos, point and shoot, follow-me applications, Stereo Vision Computer Vision.

Smartphone connectivity with WIFI communication

 

Quad core computing with modularity

Quad-core ARM® Cortex with Pre-loaded 4.2.2 Android operating system (upgradable). Modularity of Brainbox helps it upgradable with new releases of components. All boards, cameras and antennas are upgradable and plug & play.

Shock Absorption with Dual Redundant Sensing

Keeps applications working smoothly, prevents damage and disturbance. Impact resilience and prolonged structural integrity. Survives in the toughest of scenarios and higher sensing accuracy, lower standard deviation of data and great backup in case of failure

Blimps with Brains

Figure 4: Brainbox for computing, sensing and control

Together with the excellent engineering team at GTSR with focus, strength in autonomous indoor navigation, Vairdo is seeking to improve the software and control for a new generation of flying drones.

Blimps provide exceptional long endurance guidance, monitoring, reconnaissance but are limited in the amount of payload they can carry owing to the limited buoyancy of Helium or Hydrogen. The slim, compacted and light BrainBox modules are ideal for such applications and can provide complete control authority, sensing and computing needed for the most complex of R&D tasks or real-world jobs. The R&D effort between GTSR and VAIRDO is ongoing and the intellectual prowess of students, faculty at Georgia Tech, coupled with the industry experience in micro robotic hardware, multiple novel innovations are forthcoming to help in real-world scenarios, search & rescue and much more!

Scan the QR Codes to get your acquainted with the ‘Brain Box” and how it empowers Blimps.

                                                                                             

Georgia Tech Lab Work Video I       Georgia Tech Lab Work Video II              Introduction to Brain Box – VairDo Inc.

For More Information :

Vairdo Inc

79 Bonaventura Dr. NW

San Jose, CA - 95134

[Phone] +1 (669)-294-6436

BIONX: The Self-Cooling Bio-Inspired Drone

VAIRDO has developed a technique and automated cooling technology for Multi-Rotors using basic physics principles and construction using first principles.VAIRDO’s BIONX, powered by it’s BrainBox Technology is the world’s first self-cooled micro Drone.

Figure 1: Folding Legs optimize space and portability

Figure 2: Self Cooling can help with hot and arid surroundings

Reason for the innovation

Current closed electronic and mechatronic systems often suffer from overheating of electric and mechatronic components, leading to need for additional cooling elements like heat-sinks, cooling fans, liquid cooling and more components causing weight increase and/or drag to objects moving through air.

 www.vairdo.com

Description of the invention
1. The Venturi effect creates a net flow through a pipe with an opening across which a fluid is moving, the application is very useful in cooling flying vehicles or products which encounter airflow around them in normal operation (such as fans, cars, etc.) with closed bodies which house motors, electronics and heat generating parts. If constructed correctly, a network of holes on the skin of a flying vehicle or part/product interfacing with airflow could induce airflow through the body of the vehicle, or part/product, creating a cooling effect within the closed system or part, allowing for closer-constructed electronics without requiring bulky, heavy cooling apparatus or add-ons which either increase weight or add drag to the overall system in air, not to mention increased Bill of Materials (BOM) and cost.

Figure 3: Illustration of net flow created through a pipe by Venturi effect according to Bernoulli Equation.

High / Low pressure zones for the BIONX Quad-copter with tailored Body, Winglets and housings to maximize air-flow and circulation

Central Cooling and Air circulation through the patented and unique body design of the BIONX is the key in creating the most organic and natural, bio-inspired cooling solutions for light weight body designs especially seen on Air Vehicles and Micro Drones.

Air Inlet at low overall temperature and low pressure zone on the BIONX.

Airflow for the Propellers and surrounding air, channeled, directed and skimmed around the surfaces for maximum, active-passive cooling without additional weight, leading to tighter packaging and more compact applications.

BrainBox: One Brain to Rule them All

ample the Brainbox in the configuration you like. From Drones to wearables to ride-able’s, to handhelds and more.

VAIRDO is in the business of providing custom and pre-configured miniaturized computing, control and sensing platforms for industries from smart weapons, compact drone sensors & controls, video monitoring and deployable sensors, Robotics, Unmanned systems, consumer electronics. Our markets are in the Military, R&D, consumer electronics and B2B solutions.

Brainbox

The heart of a full high-performance embedded development kit environment; size smaller than the palm of a hand; performance matching smartphones, tablets and high computing mobile devices. Sensitive to the environment, packed with the world’s most complete and highest performing MEMS based sensing and vision. Suited and fitted to directly interface with your end application with no further development cost or lead time. Perform your R&D and take to end product in 1 step.

The demand for higher computing and diverse sensing in every growing markets led to the creating, design and deployment of the futuristic solution, called the BrainBox. The Brainbox is a combination of Industries best and most high performing computing and sensing in a super miniature package that fits the end application directly, while having the flexibility to spread into a full development kit for expedient development of applications. Leaving no comfort behind, giving flexibility, performance, compactness and futuristic ergonomics to raise the bar on your competitors.

DRONA: Robots and Wearables: Finger-sized-Solution

VAIRDO Inc. has done it again.

VAIRDO is officially now the world’s smallest full Drone and Autopilot systems and solutions provider.

DRONA PIC

The DRONA-PIC is the world’s smallest fully featured, double redundant sensing and control platform ideal for all robots, drones, and automation units from the micro to the massive vehicles in any range, speed, size and weight class. The Kit comes with a full range of accessories to harness all features of the board for quick turn R&D and replacement to final end product.

A super compacted and among the world’s most highly featured, micro flight control platform powered by 16bit DSPIC33e processor family. Excellent for low power, high performance applications with the full-range of sensing from inertial, atmospheric, geo-location, vision to full range of control featuring higher powered onboard DC brushless controllers & driver, servo controllers, DC brushed/coreless motor drivers. The full gamut of sensing, computing and control is complimented with a convenient and power expansion port for plug & play much higher power DC brushless motors and additional sensors, touch panels and more. The DRONA-PIC is the world’s smallest fully featured, double redundant sensing and control platform ideal for all robots, drones, and automation units from the micro to the massive vehicles in any range, speed, size and weight class. The Kit comes with a full range of accessories to harness all features of the board for quick turn R&D and replacement to final end product. At 5 grams fully featured, it is sized to meet your final product integration and market launch

The DRONA-PIC is a robust platform ideal for a variety of users ranging from hobbyists to large-scale manufacturers. The board’s sensory capabilities include Temperature, Altitude – Barometric Pressure (differential, absolute), Humidity, and Luminance. In addition, the onboard Double Redundant 3-axis Gyroscope, 3-axis Accelerometer, 3-axis Magnetometer, and GPS provide for fail-safe flight control and high precision autonomous navigation and tracking. It comes with a plug & play VGA or HD camera sensor for use in Optical Flow, visual serving and other applications.

 

 

DRONA POWER

The DRONA-Power is among the smallest fully featured, Mutli-Brushless, Touch and proximity sensing, RC board for expansion with the DRONA-PIC and DRONA-C3 series of flight computers and sensors. It has a full spread of 4 high power mosfet  redundant sensing and control platform ideal for all robots, drones, and automation units from the micro to the mid vehicles in any range, speed, size and weight class. The Kit comes with a full range of accessories to harness all features of the board for quick turn R&D and replacement to final end product.

DRONA C-3 KIT

C-3 is the “Flexi” and upgraded family member of the DRONA series. C-3 features the world’s first and smallest, fully featured, “Soft-core” processor, flight control & robotics platform; powered by numerous software CPUs including the ARM M8, Power PC and the Nios II Softcore processors on Altera’s Low-power Cyclone III FPGA.

OVERVIEW

Power of flexible, soft computing hardware in the palm of your hand. Flexible FPGA architecture allows upgrades and internal hardware re-configuration to keep application up to date with changing market without changing processors. C-3 is the “Flexi” and upgraded family member of the DRONA series. C-3 features the world’s first and smallest, fully featured, “Soft-core” processor, flight control & robotics platform; powered by numerous software CPUs including the ARM M8, Power PC and the Nios II Softcore processors on Altera’s Low-power Cyclone III FPGA. Massive amount of onboard DDR2 high performance RAM (1Gb), Excellent for low power, high performance applications with the full-range of sensing from inertial, atmospheric, geo-location, vision to full range of control featuring higher powered onboard DC brushless controllers & driver, servo controllers, DC brushed/coreless motor drivers. The full gamut of sensing, computing and control is complimented with a convenient and power expansion port for plug & play much higher power DC brushless motors and additional sensors, touch panels and more. The DRONA-PIC is the world’s smallest fully featured, double redundant sensing and control platform ideal for all robots, drones, and automation units from the micro to the massive vehicles in any range, speed, size and weight class. The Kit comes with a full range of accessories to harness all features of the board for quick turn R&D and replacement to final end product. At 5 grams fully featured, it is sized to meet your final product integration and market launch.

The DRONA-C3 is a robust platform ideal for a variety of users ranging from hobbyists to large-scale manufacturers. The board’s sensory capabilities include Temperature, Altitude – Barometric Pressure (differential, absolute), Humidity, and Luminance. In addition, the onboard Double Redunant 3-axis Gyroscope, 3-axis Accelerometer, 3-axis Magnetometer, and GPS provide for fail-safe flight control and high precision autonomous navigation and tracking. It comes with a plug & play VGA or HD camera sensor for use in Optical Flow, visual sensing and other applications.

Its on-chip Nios II processor has been optimized with custom modules to accelerate industry protocols for faster processing. The firmware has been optimized to provide extreme control. High Speed Core can reach upto 150Mhz with Memory interface at 267Mhz (upto 333Mhz) and internal Peripherals upto 1.3Ghz

OCURA KIT

Vairdo‘s OcuRa is a WiFi powered, advanced Micro-Computer with a high performance, low power Quad-Core Arm 7 processor and GPU Engine. It runs on a 4.2.2 Android operating system. OcuRa adds computer vision capabilities and Wi-Fi video streaming to any application. The ultra-small size fits it inside the smallest of user/consumer products and adds a new dimension to computing and Artificial Intelligence for a native application.

The OcuRa spawns from the most powerful smartphone architectures and has been made modular and Open Source to build custom android or linux powered onboard applications to run your product. In addition it also has WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, USB and MicroSD card slot.

Its on-chip Quad-core ARM® Cortex-A7 MPCoreTM (MT6589) has been optimized for low-powered applications, without sacrificing performance; which includes custom and new firmware blocks available with the hardware. The firmware has been optimized to provide very high performance on vision derived end applications. Internal GPU can help accelerate computer vision and digital image/signal processing capabilities of the board. Ocura comes with it’s host of development accessories and is fully packed at the industry’s most dense architectures onboard a chip weighing 6grams. Single cell operation, is perfect for use cases in the mobile industry, wearables industry and other compact & ubiquitous consumer, defense electronics.

Experts quote the brilliance of Drone as 'It will be a Drone world soon where everything and everyone will be remotely controlled'

Drone has evolved over a period of time. Who had imagined that there will be a flying robotic device which will capture our videos and images. A drone, which can deliver all our goods, making e- commerce reaching new heights. The growth in technology of drones is so immense that it can actually serve more than what a human being can do in comparatibly much lesser time. Like other 'life changing' inventions, Drones are also a result of Military Excellence. It can basically think on its own, capturing minutest of details in a blink, measure temperatures without access to the location even, keep surveillance on remotest and farthest geographical areas.

To serve excellence in all major fields, thee are many variations in its size and functions. It can either be a Pocket Drone- foldable and can help anyone being a spy. Or a Humming Bird Drone- a guant drone with capacity of airborne delivery. Or a Matsya Drone- an underwater drone to perform Naval Tasks or to monitor Petroleum delivery pipeline.