Aerial Robotics Demonstration (at FIRST Championship)

[Vince]

University students are invited to participate in the “Aerial Robotics Demonstration” to be held in Atlanta on April 17 & 18 in Atlanta, GA at the Georgia Dome as part of the FIRST Championship. The event involves programming a custom circuit board attached to a small blimp to achieve a series of competition tasks.

The platform that will be used by the university based teams is the BlimpDuino, a very low cost open source autonomous blimp. BlimpDuino consists of an Arduino-based blimp controller board with on-board infrared and ultrasonic sensors and an interface for an optional RC mode, a simple gondola with two vectoring (tilting) differential thrusters, and ground-based infrared beacon. The history of the project is detailed at the project sponsor’s web site (diydrones.com): http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/s...ogPost%3A44817

Twelve teams, comprised of university faculty, staff and students, will compete at the April event as a component of the FIRST Championship. Each team will be provided, at no cost, with the blimp control board, motors, sensors, IR transmitter, and blimp envelope, as well as the programming code for the system.

The project is open source, and uses the Arduino microprocessor (http://www.arduino.cc/) which was detailed in a recent issue of Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startup...urrentPage=all . Teams would need to cover their transportation and housing costs for the competition.

The competition will consist of a series of five tasks that test the team’s ability to achieve optimum performance in autonomous and manual control. Details of the competition will be forwarded to the competing teams. It is envisioned that the full set of competition guidelines will be developed in conjunction with the competitors as an open source dialog.

Interested participants can contact me (vincent.wilczynski AT uscga.edu, or via PM) for more information. The blimp kits are available and will be shipped to teams that commit to attending the April event.

[Nate Edwards]

I didn't get a chance to see the demo, does anyone have pictures or comments on how it went? I am interested in hearing more and seeing where the project is going so I can work with alumni that may be interested in it.

Thanks
Nate Edwards

[Andrew Schuetze]

I am fairly certian that this event did not happen. I beleive that it was slated to happen on the DaVinci field on Saturday after the FTC event ended but never saw anything happen on that field past Friday.

Others can confirm or correct me on this.

APS

[Nate Edwards]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schuetze

I am fairly certian that this event did not happen. I beleive that it was slated to happen on the DaVinci field on Saturday after the FTC event ended but never saw anything happen on that field past Friday.

Others can confirm or correct me on this.

APS

From what I read in the comments here, it did happen, but it wasn't very prominent, I am not sure exactly though.

http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/di...articipants-in