Designing a spatially aware and autonomous quadcopter

The United States creates or acquires increasingly more complex intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems to maintain a strong, leading presence within the world. As a result, ISR systems have become more costly and difficult to manage. The research team focused on continuing previous year efforts of another team to utilize commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies in the development of more flexible and cost-effective ISR systems. The primary goal was to design and implement an autonomous quadcopter that integrated an Android smartphone, an Arduino microcontroller, and several ultrasonic sensors to independently explore and map an unknown area. The project was broken down into three main tasks: construction of the quadcopter and integration of ultrasonic sensors, Android phone, and Arduino microcontroller, development of an Android application that generates navigation commands and avoids collisions, and development of an Android application that uses sensor data for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). This project, a proof-of-concept of a quadcopter system for autonomous navigation and mapping of an unknown environment, demonstrates the feasibility of developing inexpensive ISR systems with commercially available products. The team also found that the Arduino-Android interface was quite complex and caused issues with basic flight stability. The team also found that ultrasonic sensors were capable of partial SLAM by producing rudimentary maps under controlled conditions and simulated stable flight. However, the inexpensive sensors are unlikely to yield the detailed maps necessary for autonomous flight or actionable navigation information.