Past Projects Machine Games – Dodging Quadcopter This video is a demonstration of potential fields applied to quadcopters. The Daily Texan: UT UAV team designs drones for research, rescue Dr. Akella introduces quadcopters and systems the department currently has. He talks about current technology and future research directions. Related acticle: http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2015/11/13/ut-uav-team-designs-drones-for-research-rescue Quadcopter position tracking using Kinect 360 and OpenCV This experiment uses a Kinect sensor facing down from the ceiling of the laboratory. Then, the OpenCV library is used to detect the 3D position of the quadcopter by means of color tracking (the green blanket helps detecting the position of the quadcopter). The results are compared to the position measured with Vicon motion capture equipment. UAV Flight Test On Oct. 25th, 2013, Dr. Akella and Miki Szmuk performed a field test to demonstrate the autonomous flight capability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which will be used by NASA’s IceBridge program to collect environmental data in the Arctic and polar regions, including data on melting glaciers. During the test flight, a quadrotor with autopilot system was flown autonomously above a rover, tracking the rover’s motion which acted as a moving ground target. The quadrotor was also commanded to follow a path that was updated in real-time from the ground station.Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/utaerospace/sets/72157636943990845/Local news coverage: https://www.kut.org/post/ut-engineering-students-develop-drone-software-nasa Redundant IMU Configurations An array of IMUs is tested with a sounding rocket. Integrating several low-cost sensors with filters gives a better single measurement than each individual sensor, so that the combined improved sensor performance is comparable with a single more accurate and expensive IMU.
