[Week 11] Hardware build up and software developing environment setup

Date: 03.21.2019
Hardware build up and software developing environment setup

The team already got most of hardware and software for the project. Because all hardware are ordered and shipped by parts, so we have to assemble them together to a functional UAV. For the software side, we have to set up the developing environment before programming process, including gathering access to matLab UAV simulator, searching for useful packages, downloading and installing all required libraries. Also, there are two group members are working on the software, so we have to set up a version control tool(Github) in order to avoid implementation conflict.

1. UAV Building. (assigned to Justin)

The parts that we already got are:

 6 Motors
- ArduPilot Flight Controller
- 6 Electronic Speed Controller
- LiPo Battery
- Power Distribution Board
- Landing Legs
- Remote Controller
- Component Platform

The parts still in shipping:
- Optical Flow Sensor for Speed Measurements
- Wireless  Receiver
- LiDAR Lite Sensor for Altitude Control

The parts still under investigation:
- Wireless  Receiver
- 6 Carbon Fiber Arms

Current Goals

- Most of components of our UAV is already delivered or in shipping process. In the current stage, we will do a inspection for each of component to make sure every component works properly and do not have defects. Justin is testing and building the UAV. In addition, Justin is investigating wireless receiver and arms. We want to find some light-weight and durable wireless receiver and arms, so our UAV has enough power to  take off with them.

2. Setting developing environment. (Assigned to
Daeun Yim, Nanxin Jin)

We got the Matlab drone simulator license and the software access already in the lab computer. However, we still can not work locally in our laptops, so we are trying to find a way to make it work.

We were trying to select our model UAV in the simulator library and set up all sensors to make sure our simulated UAV is very similar to the real one that we are going to build.

We created a github project and started to documented our progress. 

Current Goals

- Most developing environment is already set up. So we are going to set up sensors in our simulated UAV in the simulator. Also, we will start to implement simple take off and landing function for simulated UAV and test if it works. Also, we will investigate how to deploy our code to the real UAV.