For indoor flight this Quadcopter uses 4 Sharp IR sensors, they are able to determine the range of obstacles by bouncing IR light off an object and calculate the angle of return. The flight is amazingly stable, this quadcopter allows for automatic takeoff, landing and hovering.
“For the IR range finder (Sharp GP2Y0A02) I needed to use a separate Arduino Pro mini (again we don´t have any analog input free). This module connects to the ArduIMU via Serial port so we need to choose between GPS of range finder (outdoor-indoor decision). Respect to the IR distance sensor, the first version was a moving head with a servo but this had some problems with vibrations that affect stability and also has a poor scanning rate, here is a photo of this prototype. Finally I decided to use 4 fixed sensors.“
Permalink
Every time I see a quadcopter project, I really want to make my own, and then I remember I’m broke.