frog Milan Salone: Drone Race

Source code for the Drone Race game presented at frog Milan event for the Salone del Mobile 2016. This is a racing and shooting game that is based on Parrot JumpingSumo drones and computer vision.

For a description of the project please check this article

The game is implemented by:

• An Android Mobile app that acts as remote controller, written mostly in Kotlin language, with parts in RenderScript/C and Java.
• A simple nodeJS based server component, acting as a broker to route messages among the game participants

To set up the race, it was also needed to connect drones to a central WiFi, thus changing the standard configuration of the Parrot JumpingSumo drone Linux subsystem. Notes to do that are available in the following.

This codebase was created to support a single event, as a hack journey in the fields of robotics, computer vision, game design, hastily put together in our spare time.

That means a warning is due: bumpy code ahead - server side especially, code is kind of messy. Client side, we tried to exploit the functional nature of Kotlin + RxJava, to explore the potential of the technologies.

JumpingSumo Drone Configuration

You'll need to login into the Drone IP (connecting to his own WiFi and IP) and then perform the following:

Append at the end of /etc/init.d/init_manager

sleep 30 && sh /data/wifi.sh &
exec /etc/init.d/start_main_app

Then create a script called in /data/wifi.sh with contents:

killall udhcpd
ifconfig wifi_bcm down
iwconfig wifi_bcm mode managed essid <you AP SSSID>
ifconfig wifi_bcm <IP to be assigned ot drone> netmask 255.255.255.0 up

Please also note that the drones cannot acts as DHCP clients, so you need to assign static ip. Your WiFi should also be devoid of any authentication since the stripped-down Linux that is on-board of Parrots cannot handle that. It is also suggested to use a 5ghz Wifi setting and a free channel.

To finish set up, edit the file dragon.conf as following

{
        "JumpingSumo" :
        {
                "audio_theme" : 0,
                "auto_record" : 0,
                "volume" : 0.0, //stop all those noise from the drone
                "wifi_autoselect_mode" : "none",
                "wifi_band" : 1, //0 is for 2.4 ghz, 1 for 5 ghz
                "wifi_channel" : <wifi channel chosen>,
                "wifi_settings_outdoor" : false
        },
        "network" :
        {
                "auto_country" : 0,
                "country_code" : "<two letter country code>",
                "default_c2dport" : 54321,
                "default_d2cport" : 43210,
                "product_name" : "<drone name>",
                "service_type" : "_arsdk-0902._udp"
        }
}

Reboot the drone from the shell and you should be able to see it connecting to your WiFi in a couple of minutes.