LiDAR conference

[kloner]

The Phoenix Aerial Systems cinestar 8 made it out to a lidar conference in Denver this week, check her out

 

[kloner]

 

[Danub]

Very Cool. . . . The future of small copter object avoidance (at least I think so). . . . Your build, right??
You get to play with all the cool toys

 

[kloner]

crazy aint it, whoda thunk

 

[kloner]

 

[kloner]

My camera man had gone to this conference while i was in the hospital, i'd have love to gone. this is his write up of the mission

For Flite Test:
Here is the mission should you choose to accept it:
Send Treggon "Iceplant" Owens out to Denver to attempt to do a live demo of a LIDAR. Said LIDAR wouild be hooked up to an enormous Octacopter. Never before had the LIDAR sensor and copter shook hands and made friendly. Against all Ghostbusters logic, Iceplant crossed his lasers, and headed out from San Diego to Denver to put on a show. All specs in this article are strictly from Iceplant hanging around with the Velodyne guys for 3 days and talking to so many people interested in seeing the Velodyne sensor on a lower cost platform. Facts are quoted, "as Iceplant understand's them."

The Octacopter had been tested the week before, dead-lifting 15, then 20 pounds of steel, tethered to the ground. Iceplant, Steve "Kloner" Blizzard, and Grayson "Deadbeat" Omans had to do this so that at the trade show we could let them know we could lift their sensor. That was another whole bunch of work involving much vibration isolation, changeover from Hoverfly to WooKong, as well as about a hundred knuckle bashing metric sized allen screws.

After test flying and making sure we could stuff two 1600 class pelican cases and a Burton Snowboarding bag full of a Cinestar 1000, pay the southwest $75.00 new extra high bag fees, and off to Denver Iceplant went alone to meet Wolfgang "Phud" Juchmann. The concept was to stream ethernet data off of the Velodyne sensor. The view from the Octacopter shot 700,000 points per second of XYZ laser information down to a big screen in real time. The sensor was mounted to the vibration isolation stage of the Cinestar 1000 heavy lifter rig.

Iceplant was given a carbon plate, 4 screws and a mechanical spec sheet to go off of, so he was a little concerned about final integration on site, the morning that the trade show started.

The RC gods smiled down on this ambitious project, and the concept worked out amazing. You could see the future through the eyes of this Multi-Rotor. Day, Night, Whenever, lasers shot out from the machine. In 2 nanoseconds, the electronics on board the sensor detects and calculates a reflected photon's position. It takes 32 of these lasers and spins them around 360 degrees in a circle, continuously. It does this from 8 to 20 times a second. During parts of the video, different colored lines you see on the screen represent each individual laser, so you see 32 circles swirling around you, each going out as far as it can in every direction.

The laser is also picking up information on the reflectivity of the surface that it is bouncing itself off of. When the video is mostly blue, that is in reflectivity mode. The red bits are sign material, the reflection you would see on a STOP sign. It can see a skid mark on pavement for instance, or the lines painted in the road. It sees the difference. The display is showing how the sensor can see this information. The laser can see out to between 70 and 100 Meters. You can spin yourself around in this 'POINTCLOUD' as it is called by all the people walking around the trade show.

It is all quite incredible. It is the same way the Google Automated Car cruises about and keeps itself from hitting all the obstacles in San Francisco all day long. Dozens of these cars are driving around every single day looking through this set of eyes.

It is one of the ways all machines will see in the future. What is incredible is the precision, it knows everything happening around it to within roughly 2cm accuracy. Combined with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), this technology is transformative to the UAV, Hobby, and general WORLD! After three days looking through the eyes of the Velodyne HDL-32E sensor, literally having eyes in the back of your head, your brain starts to transform and get used to the feeling. I thought the FliteTest community would enjoy the mind expansion as well, so I dropped a little homage by way of the walpaper logo.

Hes a nuclear physics major so he's got a slightly tilted view, but you get the idea. My wife calls us Big Bang when were all together. worse part is i see what shes saying.....

 

[tstrike]

That's pretty slick! Kloner, does the spinning of the camera cause any problems when the octo flies?

 

[kloner]

we havent flown it yet....... that guy came out from germany and is here the next few months. i already mentioned it's gonna have to be balanced enough to not shake on it's own like that..... the chopper aint gonna like it

google chopper

were gonna fly it as soon as i can deal with life

 

[kloner]

had a couple people ask about weights so wanted to add it. This sensor system only needs a total of 2 lbs sky. to the best of my knowledge it's the smallest one out. It is what sits on the Google driverless car that makes it sense and avoid

 

[Danub]

Is ALL of the movement in the video from the spinning lidar or is some from the air movement in the room?
She seemed to be swinging around a fair bit

 

[kloner]

the unit itself isn't balanced very well. it's got a pile of lasers and sensors on one side of the drum. it is usualy hard mounted to a car. According to these guys at this conference, none of them there has ever seen or heard of a multirotor carrying one. it was a concept idea to these people and there ready to try it out. now we gotta actualy go do the work.... crap

 

[tstrike]

That's Batman kinda sh#t right there.

 

[kloner]

it vectorizes stuff real time, assigns it gps coordinates and is 2mm accurate. weird little camera for sure. looking forward to doing alot of projects with it. There interested in long range fpv and were talking about putting them on zephyrs, seems like a better smoother platform for longer runs like utility lines, gas lines, oil lines, etc. vids like my train track videos has these laser engineers jerking off just talking about the possibilities. Here in the states the immediate customers are utility, train,road kinda stuff. There on full size aircraft now here in SD mapping all over the coast lines cause the cars can't get over there

 

[3dheliguy]

Hey klones,

That looks sweet man... Sheez, trick stuff.

PS. Just wanted to give ya a heads up you mail box is blown up.