Thread: News Miscellany
View Single Post
  #1641  
Old 01-13-2018, 02:39 PM
ceptimus's Avatar
ceptimus ceptimus is offline
puzzler
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: UK
Posts: XVMMDCCCXXI
Default Re: News Miscellany

Quote:
Originally Posted by But View Post
I so want to know if the brain is an Arduino or something as advanced as a Raspberry Pi.
There are some 'autopilots' for planes/drones/other vehicles based on the Arduino Mega 2560 (Atmel Atmega2560 chip) that are perfectly capable of piloting a drone and hitting a target with an accuracy of a few metres. The range is whatever distance the plane/drone can fly before running out of power, so with a plane - especially one with an internal combustion engine - that can be hundreds of kilometers if desired. You can buy the autopilots on eBay complete with the necessary GPS and compass modules for about $50. Look for APM 2.8. You also need a few servos and a radio control system so you can manually pilot the drone/plane for take off/launch before switching into autonomous 'mission' mode and then turning off the R/C transmitter. You can buy a suitable radio control system for about a hundred dollars or so nowadays.

I suppose the software is fairly high tech - it was developed by hobbyists over a period of a few years for controlling drones / model planes / model helicopters / model boats / model cars etc. There are better more accurate "autopilots" available if you're prepared to spend a few hundred dollars - but the APM ones are perfectly adequate.

I think the systems based on Raspberry Pis are potentially more advanced but they're still under development mostly and so not generally as reliable yet as the Arduino based systems.
__________________
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
But (01-13-2018), The Man (01-13-2018)
 
Page generated in 0.13640 seconds with 11 queries