Remote Control Helicopter with live camera streaming and auto pilot

[MithunWilliam770]

Dear Friends,

I want to make a remote controlled helicopter with a camera attached that can stream live video to my computer. For this I am planning to buy an RC toy helicopter and a wireless live streaming video camera. I want to control the helicopter with help of LabVIEW software and the streamed video from the camera, which is attached to the helicopter, to be displayed in LabVIEW's Front Panel.

This is for my college project and when I have discussed this with my guide, he told me that a helicopter with a camera attached is nothing much for a project. So I thought about adding some exciting features to make the project worth doing.

I have decided to add an auto pilot capability to the helicopter so that when an alarm condition is triggered the helicopter ,which was previously in off state resting on a helipad , starts to fly by itself to the alarm location previously set in LabVIEW and when it reaches the alarm location, starts streaming live video to LabVIEW's front panel. At the alarm location I must be able to diasble auto pilot mode and manually control the helicopter. Since virtual buttons in the front panel of LabVIEW is difficult to use for the control of motion of helicopter, I thought about attaching a gaming joystick to the computer and configure LabVIEW to use it as the helicopter control device.

Again, when I have done streaming video from the alarm location, at the push of the "Return Home" key on the LabVIEW front panel, the camera should turn off, auto pilot mode should again be triggered and the helicopter must return to the helipad automatically and turn off. Also while video streaming, to prevent the crashing of the helicopter due to low battery, auto pilot must get strictly enabled overriding manual mode automatically and the helicopter must reach the helipad before the battery gets depleted.

Since I am new to LabVIEW, I need help. Please share your ideas and experience regarding the scope of LabVIEW for this project. If possible please provide sample .vi files as attachment that may be helpful for this project. Please tell me what additional components should I buy like data aqusition cards, distance meter , battery meter etc to aid this project. Please suggest a good RC heliopter, a wireless camera and a joystick too if possible.

I badly need to do this project since it was my idea and I don't want it to be rejected by my guide due to the absence of the auto pilot mode. I cannot use GPS since I will be flying it in a small area at my college. I was thinking of providing a virtual map instructing the helicopter to fly a certain distance in a certain direction in order to reach a particular alarm location. But I don't know how to create a virtual map or anything else that will guide the helicopter using LabVIEW.

Please help me build this project. Thank you for your help and valuable time....

If I have posted in the wrong section, please forgive me........

[Daklu]

First, since you asked for a recommendation for a good RC helicopter, I assume you are not that familiar with them. I *strongly* suggest finding an RC shop and spending a good amount of time talking to the people there about your project.

I assume this is for a senior project? What is your major and area of focus? A CS major studying AI will have different goals than an EE studying control systems.

What's your budget for the project? I'd be surprised if any of the cheap 2-channel toy helicopters will have the performance you'll want. They have little available power for lifting the weight of the camera and are not very manuverable. The camera will also change the helicopter's center of gravity, which may drastically alter its flight characteristics. My guess is at minimum you'll want a 3 channel aircraft, and maybe even a 4 channel one. Of course, more channels increases the cost and complexity of your project. (Don't forget to budget for spare parts. You will break things.)

You're proposing controlling the aircraft through a software interface. That alone could present all kinds of unexpected problems for you to solve, and the approach you take will lead to drastically different solutions. How do you expect the software's control commands to get to the helicopter? Are you planning on building your own transmitter or are you going to hack the RC controller? Modern RC controllers for helicopters contain much more functionality than a simple joystick. Are you prepared to write software to replace all that hardware?

In order for the software to have an autonavigation mode, it needs to know a lot of information about the helicopter's current state: position, altitude, attitude, heading, and velocity come to mind. How do you plan on obtaining all that information? GPS is out. You could put a transponder on the helicopter and use three receivers connected to the pc to triangulate the position, but that has a set of engineering challenges all on its own. (More weight and cg chages on the helicopter, requires precise transponder placement, how to handle signal delays, etc.) In theory that will give you position and altitude. Unless the transponder pings very quickly (>10 Hz?) your sample rate will be too slow to calculate velocity. And it doesn't give you any attitude or heading information. Human pilots are a critical part of the control feedback system. They're not easy to replace.

You can try using dead reckoning by calculating the control inputs that *should* get you to where you want to be. Unfortunately, dead reckoning rarely works well for mobile robot control. Minor errors compound over time and you end up nowhere near where you should be.

My honest opinion is you're biting off a much bigger challenge than you are aware of. As a rough metaphore, if your original plan to stream video from a helicopter is a doghouse your advisors think is too simple, what you're proposing now is a 14 story office building with underground parking. I wish you the best of luck if you go forward with your idea, but be prepared to spend a huge amount of time on it.

If possible please provide sample .vi files as attachment that may be helpful for this project. Please tell me what additional components should I buy like data aqusition cards, distance meter , battery meter etc to aid this project. Please suggest a good RC heliopter, a wireless camera and a joystick too if possible.

With all due respect, it's unrealistic to expect us to do your research for you, no matter how nicely you ask. It's your vision, your project, and your grade. If you want to be sucessful you need to put in the effort. We'll help you when you have more specific questions or technical problems, but we're not going to do your work for you.

If you really need someplace to start, try this vi. (Requires Windows to run.)

HelicopterProjectHelper.vi

[sid8]

This is superb project, for this project first of all you have to choose the right RC helicopter and the camera which you want to fit on the helicopter to take shots and make video. Then you have to create a program through which you can control your helicopter through your computer..

[Daklu]

Helicopter autopilot is definitely non-trivial as by its nature its an unstable control system (I think).

Yep, real helicopters--unlike airplanes--are unstable by nature. Cheap RC helicopters are simpler and more stable than their full sized counterparts, but it doesn't make the project easy.

Some advice: I have known some very bright students to fail miserably (or do much more poorly than they should have) on their final projects as they were totally overambitious of what they could achieve in a realistic timeframe.

I agree, and I have to admit I was totally overambitious on what I could achieve. When academic theory meets real world variability big ideas become big problems with big headaches. Fortunately for me I had an advisor who made us scale back our ambitions into something manageable.

[Kas]

Some advice: I have known some very bright students to fail miserably (or do much more poorly than they should have) on their final projects as they were totally overambitious of what they could achieve in a realistic timeframe.

Very true.

If you are new to Labview, new to various control architectures, new to electronics involved etc., then I would seriously sugest that you choose or amend the project that makes use of your current knowledge. Otherwise, majority of your time will be spent on research that you may or may not understand rather than doing the project itself.

As for the project itself, it sounds good.

[Mark Balla]

There is a website called LabVIEW Hacker .

The idea is NI brings in college interns for a summer and lets them build anything they can dream up with LabVIEW.

Last year at NI Week they showed an AR Drone controlled with LabVIEW.

​ Details and libraries can be found here

Good luck on your project please let us know what selections you have made and how your project turns out

Mark

[MithunWilliam770]

Thanks guys for your valuable suggestion.....

If I am controlling the helicopter using GPS assistance, can I fly it in small open areas such as a play ground. I am talking about the resolution of the gps device.What is the smallest distance between two points that can be set so that the GPS device can clearly distinguish those two points.

If anyone has knowledge about GPS devices please share......

Thank you all for your time.....

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

Thanks guys for your valuable suggestion.....

If I am controlling the helicopter using GPS assistance, can I fly it in small open areas such as a play ground. I am talking about the resolution of the gps device.What is the smallest distance between two points that can be set so that the GPS device can clearly distinguish those two points.

If anyone has knowledge about GPS devices please share......

Thank you all for your time.....

It depends on the type of GPS device you are using, but most civil type GPS will only be accurate to about 50m, and that can get less depending on weather conditions such as clouds or rain.

[Andy456]

Its a really a adventure for the experts of the rc toys, because for this purpose you have to fit a rc camera on the heli and then operate that camera from your pc and take a snapshots and make vedios.Its also interesting job for those people who use the rc helicopters.I also have rc helicopter http://www.nitrotek.es/helicopteros-rc.html/]Mini Helicóptero RC De 4 Canales Z008 USB.[/url]

 

Regards.

Andy.