8 replies to this topic

[Gary Mortimer]

Android tablets hitting the streets seem to coming at silly low prices, I know its hard to know what they will actually be like in the flesh. But assuming at least one is reasonable I can see one as a GCS in my future.

My question is this, can the Pipbee be connected to a Wifi or Bluetooth adaptor and then speak to a tablet via either??

Something in my head is telling me it can.

That would be cool for two reasons, one, no cables and two I could tape the pipbee to the top of a pole and not suffer signal loss through the coax.

Heres a tablet that caught my eye http://newbestgadget...s-mid-1026.html

[dankers]

There is going to be a presentation around this in Portugal.

[Matt L]

I look forward to this! Using an Android tablet running the GCS and controlling the UAV is so much better than having an RC transmitter.

[cwabbott]

Oh, and what about a GCS plugin to talk to ROS? DIYD and others are talking a lot about ROS compatibility.

[peabody124]

What sort of devices are supported by that to make that worth it?

[cwabbott]

peabody124, on 21 March 2011 - 03:11 PM, said:

What sort of devices are supported by that to make that worth it?

Not sure what you mean, but the idea is that ROS runs on a laptop and controls the copter(s), and can do formation flying, advanced processing techniques / AI on the SLAM data, etc. So, for example, ROS can control the copter while it explores a building, building a map and identifying the floor plan, etc., while the copter is only focused on one particular area and doesn't have to manage the whole map. Also, you could coordinate ground and land robots, even if they have completely different sensors and protocols. Why ROS? It's already a huge & popular robotics framework, with all the libraries you need for this stuff.

[peabody124]

So this sounds like a GCS replacement, not a plugin.

[cwabbott]

peabody124, on 22 March 2011 - 07:17 AM, said:

So this sounds like a GCS replacement, not a plugin.

No, it's a library we can use for these things, instead of writing our own code. We could make a standalone ROS<->UAVObjects link which replaces the GCS, but I thought making a GCS plugin would be easier; but I could be wrong. Anyways, the GCS would probably still be required to configure the autopilot.

[Rattler]

Hay peabody124

You might find this link intresting http://www.ros.org/browse/list.php It does a lot of cool stuff if you could intergrate it into our GCS.