Birds take care of their young when they hatch. Newly born chicks depend on their parents to bring them food and require feeding every half-an-hour. Knowing this, we can now appreciate the diligence of parent birds. They go from their nest to a food source, carry it in their beaks and go back to feed their young. In fact, many birds that eat seeds, will switch to insects during the breeding season. Parents eat smaller insects themselves and take the larger ones back to the nest for the fledglings. This allows them to carry more food less frequently to their ever-hungry offspring. This process continues until the fledgling’s feathers and muscles have developed sufficiently for flight.
Navigating in 3-D space is a task that birds perform routinely but is extremely challenging, and their proficiency at this is worth not only marveling but also emulating! In this theme contestants are given a drone which represents the bird in this theme, that seeks to emulate the 3-D navigation ability of the avian species. The drone performs a task routinely performed by most birds, namely going through the process of feeding itself and its young, and henceforth this theme is called Hungry Bird and the drone is referred to as “Bird”. Through this theme, we help you learn control system design and controlling a drone using the Virtual Robot Experimentation Platform(V-REP) and Robot Operating System (ROS).
The challenge is to complete the task of navigating the Bird through hoops in the shortest time possible. An image from the overhead camera is processed by a PC using V-REP and ROS to direct the Bird. The team that performs the task best in accordance with the rules set for this task will be declared the WINNER!
Task 0 : To get started with installation of required software
Task 1.1 : Implementing Position Holding of Drone
Task 1.2 : Implementing Path Planning to Avoid Obstacle
Task 2 : Real-time Emulation
Task 3 : The drone should hold its position at the given point [0.0, 0.0, 20.0] as per the WhyCon frame of reference using the PID control algorithm.
Task 4 : Final Theme implementation
Progress Task : The drone starts from the Start, traverses through the hoop and lands back at Start.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWgW6Cbhtc-4sftxghfTwOrUbA8el1pGj