STARMAC 2 Quadrotor Helicopters

Gabriel M. Hoffmann, Steven W. Waslander, and Claire J. Tomlin

Progress Report Aeronautics and Astronautics Stanford University July 27th, 2007
San Diego, CA IROS MAV Workshop Nov. 2, 2007

Mobile Sensor Network Control

Control Objectives: Automatic information gathering Safe interaction Constraints: Power budget Communication bandwidth Computational resources

STARMAC System

Wifi Ground GPS

Ground Station Computer

Self Sufficient UAVs

Onboard computation Onboard sensing

Real Time Execution

Estimation Control

Quadrotor Helicopter Control

Angular accelerations and vertical acceleration are controlled by varying the propeller speeds.

Yaw Torque

Roll/Pitch Torque

Total Thrust

Hoffmann, Huang, Waslander, Tomlin, AIAA GNC, 2007

STARMAC 2 Electronics System

LIDAR
URG-04LX 10 Hz ranges

RS232
115 kbps

PC/104
Pentium M 1GB RAM, 1.8GHz

USB 2
480 Mbps

Stereo Cam
Videre STOC 30 fps 320x240

Firewire
480 Mbps

WiFi 802.11g+
54 Mbps

RS232

Est. & control

GPS
Superstar II 10 Hz

UART
19.2 kbps 115 Kbps

Stargate 1.0
Intel PXA255 64MB RAM, 400MHz

UART

CF
100 Mbps

WiFi 802.11b
5 Mbps

IMU
3DMG-X1 76 or 100 Hz

UART Robostix
Atmega128 Low level control
Analog

Supervisor, GPS

UART
115 kbps

Ranger
SRF08 13 Hz Altitude

I2C
400 kbps

PPM
100 Hz

Ranger
Mini-AE 10-50 Hz Altitude
Timing/ Analog

Beacon
Tracker/DTS 1 Hz

ESC & Motors

Phoenix-25, Axi 2208/26

STARMAC 2 Quadrotor Helicopter

Carbon Carbon Fiber Tubing Fiber Tubing Fiberglass Fiberglass Honeycomb Honeycomb Tube Tube Straps Straps Sensorless Sensorless Brushless Brushless DC Motors DC Motors Axi 2208/26 Axi 2208/26 Electronic Speed Electronic Speed Controllers Controllers Phoenix 25 Phoenix 25 Landing Landing Gear Gear Battery Battery Lithium Polymer Lithium Polymer High Level Control High Level Control Processors Processors PXA270 or PC104 PXA270 or PC104 Low Level Control Low Level Control Processor Processor Atmega128 Atmega128 Electronics Electronics Interface Interface

GPS GPS Superstar II Superstar II Ultrasonic Ultrasonic Ranger Ranger Mini-AE Mini-AE

Inertial Inertial Meas. Unit Meas. Unit (IMU) (IMU) 3DMG-X1 3DMG-X1

Attitude Control Dynamic Response

Key Developments Rigid Frame Rotor Spacing Tip Vortex Impingement Command Tracking PID Digital Input Filter 16 bit Resolution
Controller Dynamics

Roll 30 20 Degrees 10 0 -10 -20 -30 10 30 20 Degrees 10 0 -10 -20 -30 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 15 20 25 30 35 Pitch 40 45 50 55 60

Altitude Control
Controller Dynamics

Key Developments Rotor Spacing Tip Vortex Impingement Tilt Compensation Specific Thrust Control Sensor Selection

Flight Tests

Information-Seeking Problem Framework

Sensor Filter

Dynamics

Controller

Controller goal is to minimize the uncertainty of There may be no reason to move towards the target

Modeling Uncertainty to Increase Knowledge

Target State: Observations: Target State Model: Sensor model: Vehicle States: Control Inputs: Motion Model:

Use Bayes Rule to update the target state model,

Minimize the expected future uncertainty,

Maximizing Information
Ask a broad question
Expected Observation Probability

with a distinct answer

Sensor Model

Bayes Rule using Particle Filters

Uses available prior knowledge Allows multimodal posterior Permits nonlinear & non-Gaussian models

Particle Set

Correction (weighting)

Resampling

Prediction Particle Set

Mutual Information from Particle Filters

Hoffmann, Waslander, Tomlin, GNC, 2006

Distributed Optimization Program

Ihalhan, Stipanovic, Tomlin, CDC, 2002

Hoffmann, Waslander, Tomlin, CDC, 2006

Range-Only Example
Measure the distance to the target

Bearings-Only Example
Measure the direction to the target

Medium Noise

High Noise

Beacon Field Example

Measure the field line orientation

Research Directions
Flight Tests of Autonomous Search Time Horizon, Moving Targets Generalize to Other Applications
Unexploded ordinance detection Submarine detection Beacon tracking scenarios RFID tracking Survey of disaster areas Biological studies, animal monitoring etc

Distributed Concurrent Execution Framework

http://hoffmann.stanford.edu/ http://hybrid.stanford.edu/starmac