Here is a project idea that a friend of mine and I came up collaboratively, but ended up rejected by him and put on backburner by me. Now I want to revive it but it always seemed to me that a few pieces that I cannot put my fingers to is missing.
After acquiring a destination the craft should be able to fly and navigate on its own, albeit with a 3G Internet connection. It have an autonomous system that finds its best course, fly under instrument navigation following such course, avoid collision with other objects using its sonar system, correct its course against the winds, and if such equipment is possible, refuel itself on roof-mounted inductive charging pads.
Here is a list of sensors and electronics I think it will need to function:
- GPS (general navigation)
- Accelerator (inertial navigation, course correction)
- Gyroscope (inertial navigation, course correction)
- Magnetometer (general navigation, course correction)
- Wi-Fi dongle (inter-craft communication, precision locating)
- Sonar (collision avoidance, landing control)
- 3G modem (communications, command & control, locating beacon)
- Inductive charging kit (autonomous refueling)
The system consists of two layers of control: Consciousness and Instincts. The lower Instincts layer, implemented on a microcontroller, performs the actual motor driving, and also includes failsafes that will avoid collision, avoid ditching, and land the craft on flat surface when higher control is lost. The higher Consciousness layer, implemented using a Raspberry Pi, controls the direction the craft is going to, corrects the course of wind error, and receives higher control (on the cloud, called Will, which controls multiple crafts in a region - out of scope here)
My question is how should such a system be designed?