Autonomous flight - receiving command from pc on each specific time

Discussions and questions about the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter
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karusan
Beginner
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2018 12:47 pm

Autonomous flight - receiving command from pc on each specific time

Post by karusan »

Hi,

I'm still new to crazyflie and have a very limited knowledge but I am very eager and interested to learn the autonomous flight. I am planning to use the vicon motion capture system to check the position of the quadrotor and then create a trajectory for it to follow and hold its position. I want to process the data in matlab or any other platform (any suggestion?) and then send the parameters such as Vx, Vy and Yaw and thrust. I have tried the autonomous flight using python of a pre-defined path trajectory (ex. flowSequenceSync.py etc.) with flow deck but I think it is more on running the file and then wait for the result. I want to keep on tracking the position and update the command. Is it possible to send the data one at a time and then update the new command (on pc) based on actual position to the target position at specific time?

PS. I really have a very limited knowledge so I would appreciate if you can give a more detailed advice and suggestions.

Thank you in advance for the help.
arnaud
Bitcraze
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Joined: Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:36 pm

Re: Autonomous flight - receiving command from pc on each specific time

Post by arnaud »

What you are describing is possible but what you should do depends greatly of what you are trying to achieve.

when using a motion capture system, you normally send the motion capture pose estimate to the Crazyflie in real-time this way the Crazyflie can estimate its state (position/velocity/acceleration and attitude) by fusing the mocap estimate and the internal gyroscope and accelerometer using a Kalman filter.

Then it is possible to send velocity or position setpoints to the Crazyflie and the internal controller will work at following the setpoint.

If you want to use a mocap, the simplest to get started might be to setup Crazyswarm: https://crazyswarm.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. It is well documented and it will allow you to get your Crazyflie flying in a Vicon. Once this is done you will be able to control Crazyflie using the ROS Crazyflie driver and you can connect Matlab to ROS using the robotic system toolbox. If you are not already set on Matlab, I would suggest using Python/scipy instead since there is few support for Crazyflie in matlab outside using ROS and the robotic system toolbox.
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