Development and control of a mini quad-copter

• Main Author: Tan, Wei Hong.
• Other Authors: Wang Jianliang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/53345
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has been a popular topic for research and development. Besides using the UAV for military purpose, the UAVs are now being used with the design of quad-copter for capturing aerial imagery using on-board camera so as to stream live video to the ground station. However, it appears to be at the juncture where the cost and capabilities of such systems have become concerns in civilian applications. One of the most essential considerations is the accuracy of the position of the camera on the quad-copter that could provide precise vision information in body frame. In this project, the main objective is to develop an understanding of simulating the mini quad-copter’s behaviour using a pinhole camera. There are 2 major portions in this project, namely, the hardware development and the calibration process to determine the position of the camera at the center of the quad-copter. For the hardware development, the student will make use of an Overo Fire COM which is a small OMAP3530based computer-on-module with a Caspa VL pinhole camera installed to it. There will also be a detailed description on the hardware design in the later part of this report. The calibration process includes finding the calibration parameters based on the available source provided, which contains camera calibration tools used for MATLAB and also to determine the exact position of the Caspa VL camera on the mini quad-copter from the experiment conducted. This is to be done given the computed information of the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters found from the calibration toolbox. Finally, experimental results are presented to verify the accuracy of the positioning. Project results, discussions and recommendations are also made at the end of the report to encourage future developers to conduct more extensive explorations of the available features in the Overo Fire COM board to enhance the current project.