Bitcraze Forums

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had made a input file of some sort for Crazyflie, so it would go through a defined area and come back. Is this possible?

Thanks.

Hi,

I guess you are talking about autonomously flying the crazyflie without user input. Without extra sensor it is not possible, the copter has to locate itself in the room.

We have seen a couple of people getting the Crazyflie autonomous. Among others the is a control from a kinect camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zlpJ9Yo93U. And a super cool control from an internal camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYuhrNMYlfk. Both made by Oliver Dunkley, and both uses the pc to process the images though. We are not at the point where we can run this kind of vision algorithm.

Another way to go is to have a local positioning system. This I have not seen yet but it would be really cool.

Regards,
/Arnaud

Arnaud. Thanks for your reply.

I was actually looking to do something relatively simplistic, like have it take off and fly just 2 ft vertically and land. so it is autonomous in that I am not controlling it, but it is not a complex flight path.

Hi,

Using the python API you can control the Crazyflie programatically. See the ramp example that makes the motors spin: https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyflie-c ... es/ramp.py

With this API you can start playing around sending commands to the copter and see what happens. If you find out at which thrust it rises and at which thrust is slowly go down you can make such simple flight. Though the amount of success will greatly depends of battery charge and the airflow condition.

For vertical flight you can try using the altitude hold mode (if you have a 10DOF). In theory it could regulate the altitude of the copter an allow much more stable flight as long as the air pressure is stable (the current algorithm is very sensitive to room pressure change).

Overall try to protect your crazyflie, either by tethering it to the ground (with a light wire) or by having a way to shut off quickly the motor (worst case pull the radio). If your program crash you will get a real life crash .

Good luck!
/Arnaud

ok Thanks! And by the API, do you mean the logging and perimeters? Thanks!

To send setpoints you don't really need log and param. However log and param can be useful if you want to get sensor values or to configure things (param is required to activate altitude hold for example).
/Arnaud

How do I run the autonomous code on my CF?

Hi qubitter,

Can you please start a new thread, I think it is an interesting question and it would be best in its own thread.

Can you precise what you want to achieve? Do you already have some autonomous control in python and you want to move it in the firmware?