Follow me as I attempt to build an fully autonomous flying craft (based off the movie The Terminator) called a Hunter Killer.
Part 1: The Beginnings...
Posted 22nd July 2009 at 03:24 PM by ElectroMaster
Updated 5th August 2009 at 10:51 AM by ElectroMaster
Updated 5th August 2009 at 10:51 AM by ElectroMaster
I have an idea, a big one. It's going to consume many hours - and annoy the heck out of my girlfriend, but it's going to be awesome! I plan to build an autonomous model air craft based off the Terminator movies, it's call a Hunter Killer, H.K. for short..
Since this is a rather large project I plan on breaking it down into three phases. The first phase will be building the craft (my initial thoughts are to make it approx 50cm long) which will have many hard to accomplish mechanical feats. The first one that comes to mind is solving the power to weight ratio. This will require choosing the correct materials for the hull and also deciding what types of motors, batteries, etc to use which will have enough thrust to lift it off the ground. This first phase is all about building the craft so that it has the engineering to fly.
Phase two, we have the challenge of getting the HK to hover and balancing itself (autonomously). Now, if you search YouTube for "model vtol", you will see that many of them are radio controlled and are very unstable, hard to fly, etc. This is because they have no auto balancing. For the HK to balance itself and eventually navigate it needs have some automatic system to detect its balance. It also needs to be able to correct itself when affected by the surrounding such as nearby wind, rain, etc.
The third phase we will focus on the brains of the HK and to challenge it. The first goal will be to control the HK manually in all directions, up, down, forward, back, left and right. Once we have full control the challenge will be to get the HK to navigate from point A to point B (using GPS) avoiding objects.
At the moment this is a simple outline of objectives that I want the HK to be able to accomplish, it's just the start. Over the coming weeks and months I will keep updating this blog with notes, test results, and any construction. Until next time!
Since this is a rather large project I plan on breaking it down into three phases. The first phase will be building the craft (my initial thoughts are to make it approx 50cm long) which will have many hard to accomplish mechanical feats. The first one that comes to mind is solving the power to weight ratio. This will require choosing the correct materials for the hull and also deciding what types of motors, batteries, etc to use which will have enough thrust to lift it off the ground. This first phase is all about building the craft so that it has the engineering to fly.
Phase two, we have the challenge of getting the HK to hover and balancing itself (autonomously). Now, if you search YouTube for "model vtol", you will see that many of them are radio controlled and are very unstable, hard to fly, etc. This is because they have no auto balancing. For the HK to balance itself and eventually navigate it needs have some automatic system to detect its balance. It also needs to be able to correct itself when affected by the surrounding such as nearby wind, rain, etc.
The third phase we will focus on the brains of the HK and to challenge it. The first goal will be to control the HK manually in all directions, up, down, forward, back, left and right. Once we have full control the challenge will be to get the HK to navigate from point A to point B (using GPS) avoiding objects.
At the moment this is a simple outline of objectives that I want the HK to be able to accomplish, it's just the start. Over the coming weeks and months I will keep updating this blog with notes, test results, and any construction. Until next time!
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