What is XYZ?

XYZ is an application that grants the astronaut the ability to fly an unmanned aircraft (drone) from the comfort of his cell phone, tablet or PC without putting their lives at risk, improving the security, control and support during the research efforts of different planets through out the universe. Aided by sensors used by the drone, it will be able to transmit image, video and valuable navigation data in the face of the climate adversities which will be present during the development of investigations.

Development:

Several approaches were considered during the development phase, opting for using Android Studio combined with Python and ROS, working under a Linux platform (Ubuntu).

In order to design the controller some code snippets were adapted from previous AI courses, currently hosted at https://github.com/dsapandora/ar_drone_wrapper

The main application was developed using Python.

Solution to the problem:

Create a controller to pilot an unmanned ship, to be used with an application installed on a mobile device, that will allow the astronaut to control said ship remotely, thus avoiding putting his life at risk and from which relevant information can be obtained, both of its route through images obtained using the camera, as well as its navigation data (battery %, altitude, movement on the x, y, z axes, etc.) which are required to demonstrate malfunctions and prevent equipment loss.

How it works:

The application consists of two essential parts: the first one is the app installed on the mobile device that provides the movement instructions; the second one is the server that receives these instructions, communicates them to the drone and waits for the return of the issued data (image and navigation), to later store the navigation data and retransmit the image to the app used by the astronaut in order to perform an optimal tour of the studied area.

It should be noted that this application is not limited to mobile devices, given that it can also be run on a normal computer.

Management of communication between devices

The communication between the mobile device and the drone, it is necessary to make use of the mesh networks proposed by the DeltaProtocol team, winner of the Space Apps Challenge 2018, whose solution was expressed as follows:

"The system will be based on a mesh network built following the LoRaWAN protocol. This protocol enables slow speed data transmission with a long range and low power consumption. The mesh network is designed to function as the backbone that will support the other parts of the sensors’ net."

"We chose a mesh network for two fundamental reasons. First, a mesh network may be dynamically reconfigured. This enables the network to continue working even if one of the transceivers crashes, with almost no downtime. This capability is extremely important when working in challenging settings such as Mars. Second, a mesh network is scalable. It requires low setup costs and allows for easy expansion and servicing by astronauts."

Resources:

- Android Studio

- Python3 libraries (numpy, pygame, imutils, pip3)

- Java

- Ros Melodic

- Flask 1.2

- Sublime Text

What's next?

- Sending the gyro sensor data to a server. This data transmission needs to be directly connected to the server; during the development stage Android Studio was used instead as a bridge between the mobile device and the server.

- Information needs to be sent to the drone through the use of ROS using the data provided by the gyro sensor, to be later processed by the drone according to the previously practiced routines. Flask intervenes during the data transmission between the server and the drone.

- Current movement scope is limited to Yaw Left and Yaw Right, aiming to expand the movement range such as inclination angles or turning around its axes towards later stages of development.

- Data is transferred using the network address of the drone using cmd_vel to store the drone movements.

Challenges

Implementing the application for its possible use on any device. Further code development to add improvements.

The adaptation of the drone to the different atmospheric conditions of each planet will remain under the responsibility of the astronaut, who must decide and configure what type of equipment to use according to the different variables existing in the environment.

Reference:

Link github project:https://github.com/Nanita46/XYZ-Code

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