Object Avoidance in drones using any type of sensor.

Introduction Currently Ardupilot supports only a certain types of sensors to be used for object avoidance. This project hopes to achieve the same using any type of sensor.

⚠️ The Scripts in this project are highly experimental and can lead to crash of your drone so use these with caution.

Requirements

• A Pixhwak, APM or any Ardupilot compitable flight controller.

• A Raspberry Pi configured as a companion computer For more info on how to configure Raspberry Pi as a companion computer go to this link http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/raspberry-pi-via-mavlink.html

• Basic knowledge of python.

Usage

• Copy the object_avoidance_test.py file to the Raspberry Pi.
• Change the ECHO and TRIG pin if required.
• Check if the serial port is correct.
• Open Full Parameter List in mission planner and change PRX_TYPE to 2

Testing

To check if everything works, connect the flight controller to mission planner. Press Ctrl+F and select proximity If obstacles are detected than everything is working fine.

Working

This script converts the distance measured by any sensor and converts it into a distance_sensor mavlink message and sends it to the FC via the telemetry port. For more info http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/code-overview-object-avoidance.html The function sensor_data(d,o) encodes distance and orientation as mavlink message and sends them to the fc. The argument distance takes values in cm and orientation takes value as following: 0:Forward 1:Forward-Right 2:Right 3:Back-Right 4:Back 5:Back-Left 6:Left 7:Forward-Left 24:Up 25:Down For addition of more sensors, the distance can be collected and sent via the sensor_data function with the correct orientation.