Motivation

Nowadays, there has been a tendency to design and develop drones that can perform planetary and whole space investigation. Obviously, there are lots of pathways to probe space objects. For instance, launching satellites, rovers, and robots. However, due to the valuable advantages of drones compared to other approaches in space study, abundant research has been accomplished by different space companies around the world, such as NASA, to apply drones for a range of using in the space.

However, when the thought arose in our head about developing a project related to a drone, we faced with the problem of controlling it from Earth.

We are a team SDGC, and our project involves the creation of remote control for drones or other flying objects.The main device is a smartphone or tablet, and our remote control increases the accuracy of measurements and allows us to expand the functionality.

Operating principles

In our project, the microcontroller on the control device collects data from accelerometer+gyroscope, joystick and 3 buttons.

Accelerometer+Gyroscope:

• angular_velocity_x
• angular_velocity_y
• angular_velocity_z
• acceleration_x
• acceleration_y
• acceleration_z

Joystick:

• joystick_x
• joystick_y
• joystick_button

Buttons:

• button_1
• button_2
• button_3

Converting data with a frequency of 1 kHz performs primary processing and transfers it via Wi-fi to the main device (mobile phone or computer) with a frequency of 30 or 60 Hz, and it, in turn, transfers this information to the drone.

The main point in our work is, that we use a TCP connection to transfer data from the controller to the main device. The processed data with accelerometer+gyroscope is transmitted by the Wi-fi module via the TCP to the Unity.

Current version and future developments

Tools Used:

• Unity 3D
• Blender
• C# programming language
• C programming language
• Autodesk Inventor
• Ultimaker Cura

Possible improvements:

• Refinement of design (closed case);
• Improved materials and components;
• Transfer all electronics to a single circuit board (resulting in lower cost);
• Expanding Applications(connection with the real drone/space drone);

GitHub: https://github.com/FursinMihail/SDGC

Presentation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cScscZZwhPuW8mBA...