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nitinjsanket edited this page May 10, 2020 · 18 revisions

Welcome to the PRGFlyt wiki!

What is PRGFlyt?

PRGFlyt is an AI based indoor quadrotor autonomy framework for accomplishing various navigation and interaction tasks designed for both research and pedagogical purposes. It is developed by the Perception and Robotics Group at the University of Maryland, College Park. PRGFlyt leverages the awesome work of the open-source and open-hardware community with the goal of giving back to the community. This framework implements a lot of state-of-the art research papers and also provides both hardware and software setup guidelines for various platforms. Common hardware and software issues are also presented so that it can save time for everyone.

Authors/Maintainers

  • Nitin J. Sanket (nitinsan at terpmail dot umd dot edu), Fourth Year PhD Candidate
  • Chahat Deep Singh (chahat at terpmail dot umd dot edu), Second Year PhD Student

Hardware Naming Conventions

All our hardware platforms are named after dog breeds with the names representing the size of the quadrotor. The following tables provides the name and size/weight of the quadrotor. Click on the name for visiting the corresponding page.

Name Motor to Motor Length Max. Weight
PRGWhippet 100 - 160 mm 300 g
PRGCorgi 180 - 210 mm 700 g
PRGHusky 240 - 360 mm 1300 g
PRGLabrador 450 - 500 mm 2000 g
PRGMastiff >= 650 mm 3500 g

Note that each quadrotor can be built with different autopilot softwares and each software has it's own advantages and disadvantages. The following table presents the suffix used for the particular autopilot software.

Autopilot Software Name Suffix
Ardupilot Alpha or $$\alpha$$
Betaflight Beta or $$\beta$$
Parrot Bebop 2 Gamma or $$\gamma$$

Tested Hardware

Flight Controllers (FCUs)
Hardware Name Firmware Version Working Sourcing Link Price in USD
Stabilize AltHold FlowHold Loiter
Holybro Kakute F7 AIO V1.0 ArduCopter 3.6.11 ☑ (Force Source) ☑ (Force Source) Link 49.00
Holybro Kakute F7 AIO V1.5 ArduCopter 3.6.11 ☑ (Force Source) ☑ (Force Source) Link 49.00
Holybro Kakute F7 Mini ArduCopter 3.6.11 Link 43.00
mRo Pixhawk (Bare-bones) ArduCopter 3.6.11 ☑ (Needs Compass) ☑ (Needs Compass) Link 129.90
mRo PixRacer R15 ArduCopter 3.6.11 ☑ (Needs Compass) ☑ (Needs Compass) Link 99.00
Holybro kakute F4 AIO V2 ArduCopter 3.6.11 ☒ (Issues at high loop rate, alt gains or dips) Link 40.00
Electronic Speed Controllers (ESCs)
Hardware Name Firmware Version Working Best Protocol Sourcing Link Price in USD
Lumenier 35A 4 In 1 3.6.7 - 4.0.0.rc5-dev DShot 1200 Link 59.99
DYS F20A 4 In 1 3.6.7 - 4.0.0.rc5-dev ☒ (Buggy) DShot 600 Link 38.99
Sensors
Hardware Name Ardupilot Compatibility (Firmware Version) Working Sourcing Link Price in USD Drivers/Documentation/Setup Guide
Benewake TFmini ☑ (3.6.7 - 4.0.0.rc5-dev) ☑ (UART Only) Link 44.95 Sensor Specs
Hobbypower PX4Flow v1.3.1 ☑ (3.6.7 - 4.0.0.rc5-dev) ☑ (UART Only) Link 44.95 Sensor Datasheet
OpenMV M7/H7 Camera ☑ (4.0.0.rc5-dev) ☑ (I2C Only) Link 65.00 Sensor Specs, Sensor Datasheet
FPV Optical Flow Sensor ☑ (3.6.11 - 4.0.0.rc5-dev) ☑ (UART Only) Link 12.89 Sensor Specs

Learning about Quadrotors

Please watch the videos from this link to learn about quadrotor autonomy.

Citation

If you like our work and use it in any of your projects please cite us as

@misc{prgflyt,
         author = {Nitin J. Sanket, Chahat Deep Singh, Cornelia Ferm\"uller, Yiannis Aloimonos},
         title = {PRGFlyt: AI based indoor quadrotor autonomy framework for navigation and interaction tasks},
         year = {2019},
         howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/prgumd/PRGFlyt/wiki}}
    }

Citations for each algorithm is given in the particular repository.

Acknowledgments

PRGFlyt would not have been possible without the awesome open-source and open-hardware community, especially the ardupilot stack, betaflight stack, px4flow, openMV, Jevois camera and bebop_autonomy.

License