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Quadrocopter (Ascending Technologies X-3D-BL)
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The quadrocopter has a classical four rotor design with two counter rotating pairs of propellers arranged in a square and connected to the cross of the diagonals. The controller board, including sensors, is mounted in the middle of the cross together with the battery, while the brushless controllers are mounted on the underside of the booms. As the quadrocopter is operated indoors, a lightweight shield is mounted around the propellers for the additional safety.
Quadrocopter is controlled manually (using the remote control) or by the on-board controller. The controller board contains both primary sensors (3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis accelerometer, pressure sensor) and two microcontrollers LPC2146. First microcontroller contains closed-source firmware that does a low-level stabilization (attitude stabilization) by using the sensor data, while the second microcontroller is programmable and is used for high-level tasks as position control, trajectory following, etc.
For the purpose of the research, the quadrocopter was equipped with the KX171 color video camera, video wireless transmitter, camera power supply and the timestamp generator circuit. This setup enables visual servoing methods to be developed for the quadrocopter.
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