Tech Talk: Building a Drone

Ankur, a member of our DC DUG community and engineer by training, has been working on making his own drone including the hardware and the software (flight control system, communication system, and flight control application). He can control the yaw/pitch/roll using an Xbox controller connected to his computer. He has volunteered to give a talk about his experiences building the drone.

The talk will cover:

• A brief overview of the drones industry, focusing mostly on the commercial applications. Who are the major players, what types of drones are commercially available, their capabilities etc.

• Some interesting applications of drones technology - arial photography, terrain reconstruction, even herding flocks of animals

• Introduction to how Quadcopters work, Basic information about yaw/pitch/roll control, PID control systems, Sensor integration, Embedded systems programming, Quadcopter frame construction, Designing a Drone controller app, Flight data logs

Video of the quadcopter: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=409b25836fb0973d!12569&authkey=!AHosWd5XawChSKw&ithint=video%2cwmv

Photo of the quadcopter: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=409b25836fb0973d!12578&authkey=!ANbMbQy7OyNAudc&v=3&ithint=photo%2cJPG

This talk is part of a series of volunteer talks by members of the DC DUG community. Stay tuned for more this summer!