Hello,
The next OSHUG meeting will be on Thursday 21st June. Details and
registration link below.
Regards,
Andrew
//
OSHUG #20 — Drones (UDB4, OpenRelief, ARDrone + Kinect)
On the 21st June 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative
Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG (51.529049,
-0.116436)
Sponsored by Embecosm: http://www.embecosm.com
— Registration: http://oshug.org/event/20
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, are increasingly making
the news, but when they do so it's usually because of their use in
warfare. However, drones can be put to use in many other, far more
positive applications. And at the twentieth OSHUG meeting we will hear
talks on an experimental attitude and heading reference system (AHRS),
using open source technology to build drones for use in disaster
relief, and on a fun and novel method of flying drones via gesture
control.
- Using UDB4 for an Experimental AHRS
The UAV Development Board is a very versatile development board that
has been around for the past five or so years, and which has been
supported by small team led by William Premerlani. The board comes
with a dsPIC30F4011 microcontroller, an MMA7260 three axis
accelerometer and two dual-axis Inversense IXZ500 gyroscopes. It has
supported various forms of platforms ranging from inverted pendulums
to multicoptors. It has primarily been a development platform for
experimenters and it is in its fourth major revision.
The talk intends to give a high level view of the MatrixPilot firmware
as a general introduction to autopilots, with a demonstration of the
Hardware in loop simulation to show how it behaves in flight for a
fixed wing aircraft.
Anish Mohammed has been an electronics hobbyist and software hacker
since his early teens. He spent almost a decade in research and
development in security and cryptography, and these days he works for
the Big Five in consulting. He is a confirmed UAV addict who owns a
dozen AHRS/Autopilots, both open and partially closed, with interests
in multicopters, fixed wings and rovers.
- OpenRelief — Open Source Software and Open Hardware For Frontline
Disaster Relief
This talk will explore how the OpenRelief team, inspired by challenges
seen during the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, is using Open Source Software
and Open Hardware to create disaster relief tools. The first step is
to develop a small drone that can take off from anywhere, recognize
roads, people and smoke while also measuring weather and radiation. It
can be built for less than 1,000 USD, and easily shares information
with Open Source and proprietary disaster management systems. The goal
is to gather critical information for relief workers on the ground,
and contribute to getting aid where it is needed.
Karl Lattimer is an engineer who started early with electronics and
programming, and has worked on all kinds of projects for many
companies developing software to solve a wide variety of problems. He
currently works for Codethink Ltd, an engineering firm based in
Manchester, UK. Karl is enthusiastic about Artificial Intelligence,
Computer Vision, Robotics and related engineering disciplines. He is a
firm believer that we can engineer a future that is more sustainable,
adaptive and integrated. His interest in OpenRelief stems from a
desire to engineer solutions to the problems faced in disaster
scenarios, and the desire to drive the permeation of robots into our
everyday lives.
- Flying an ARDrone Like a 7-year Old Child
Controlling a Parrot ARDrone using URBI, python and an MS Kinect
camera, allowing people to fly it by holding their arms out and
pretending to be an airplane like a small child. This was in truth an
exploration in how to couple independent projects and to explore and
exploit the APIs presented by the kinect and the drone's software.
Ben O'Steen is a freelance developer with an interest in the fuzzy
divide between physical and digital spaces, such as how we perceive
and use objects differently based on how they are (re)produced,
presented or controlled. Currently, he can be found working on digital
library and archive projects for academic institutions, art
installations and his newly completed 3d printer.
— Registration: http://oshug.org/event/20
