This post outlines the build of a micro quad that’s been designed with endurance in mind. I designed and 3d printed the quad parts to fit micro DC motors, prop gears and all relevant electronics, with reduction of weight being a prime objective. Motors & Prop Setup Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links to product
CategoryProjects
Build logs of various projects
3D Printed Landsail with Rigid Wing
This post outlines the design, printing and assembly of a 3D printed landsail with a rigid wing as a sail. Landsailing is a sport that applies the principles of sailing to land vehicles for propulsion. A lightweight wheeled vehicle is fitted with a mast and sail which uses wind-induced lift to provide thrust to the
Fully 3D printed quad: design, printing, maiden flight
In this post I outline a 260mm FPV quadcopter build whose frame I designed and 3D printed in my home printer. Carbon fiber is the material of choice for multirotors and other flying machines due to it being stiff and light. However, carbon fiber comes with many limitations in form. Usually frames made out of
Fully Autonomous Robocar
The last updates in the Burro autonomous robocar platform focus on two areas: Collaborative driving and fully autonomous driving (steering and throttle). Collaborative driving allows control of a single vehicle using multiple controllers and a self-driving model, all at the same time. Using this feature, one may have a neural network control the steering and
Autonomous driving at the micro scale
Building and training a self-driving robocar takes several iterations of hardware and software improvements. Especially training a competitive model is a time consuming process that involves going back-and-forth to the track several times to either check or improve model predictive performance by recording additional samples. Computer simulation is an alternative, however setting up a simulation
Emulating an Ackermann Steering Vehicle
Two steering schemes are mostly popular when it comes to ground vehicles: Differential, or skid steering, and Ackermann steering. Differential steering vehicles, despite their fancy name, look just like the typical two-wheel robot chassis found pretty much everywhere: Differential steering vehicles, as the name suggests, use differential thrust to turn. Most are made of two wheels
Building a DIY sub-500 gram quadcopter
In a previous post I’ve discussed the advantages of a lightweight aircraft: longer flight times, quieter operation, less stress to the components, more responsive control. In addition, having an aircraft below 500 grams (less than around 1.10 pounds) has the advantage that in many countries it does not require registration to fly, except for where
Updates to Burro self-driving platform
I’ve been busy implementing some cool updates to Burro, the self-driving RC car/robot platform I’m building. Here’s a summary: The Adafruit Motor HAT is now supported in addition to NAVIO2. Both boards are fully supported , and in fact you can use the same SD card in different cars/robots, without the need to reinstall anything, as
Autonomous Indoor Laps without Tracklines!
Here for a quick update on the state of the autonomous car, platform and Tensorflow/Keras models I’m building and testing in various environments. I’ve been working on an indoor model to drive around the dining table in our home. The aim is to have no markings at all, so that the car relies only on it’s
An Experiment On Small Vehicle Transmission
Most folks want to make their RC cars run fast. My case is the opposite: I want to capture clear pictures without blur for training a neural network to drive the car, thus I want to run the car slow. The self-driving car that I built is based on a brushless setup and goes too
Indoor holonomic rover with NAVIO2 and Wifibroadcast
I’ve thrown together a quick mockup of a holonomic indoor rover using an F450 base plate, some CF tubes, a bunch of micro DC motors and my NAVIO2 setup, with a TL-WN722 wireless card. I’ve used the Fingertech Mecanum wheels, but I was quite disappointed at their design and build quality; long story short, I
Another take on the Carbon Fiber frame
In the last post I went through the process of designing and realizing my first carbon fiber H-quad. While the molding and lamination process itself was successful, the design was based on an open section, a fact that made it twist excessively even though it was quite resistant to bending. I thus went on to