
Building a semi-autonomous drone with Python - elisebreda
http://blog.yhat.com/posts/autonomous-droning-with-python.html
======
anysz
This should be called "Building a semi-autonomous drone with ScienceOps"

Maybe I'm overreacting, but I always get a bitter taste in my mouth when I
start a tutorial whose title claims to teach something but then gaps a huge
problem using a product.

This is a form of growth hacking that screws over people who come to learn.

So many companies do this, it's very frustrating.

They could turn this into such a positive by introducing the technical way
first... They'd then have it all laid out to describe their product and how
much code it saves.

------
jjwiseman
Two or three years ago it seemed that there was a lot of hacking happening on
the AR.Drone: We had the Drone Games (née Drone Olympics), the ar-drone node
module was under active development, and there was even an effort to write a
replacement firmware.

Now, [http://dronegames.co/](http://dronegames.co/) is still touting the 2013
Games.

Parrot has released many new drones since the AR.Drone, but from what I can
tell it's not that the hackers are now working on the Bebop or Rolling Spider;
I'm not sure where they went.

I'm a committer on the ar-drone node library, but lately I've mostly been
working on turboshrimp, a clojure library for AR.Drone control:
[https://github.com/wiseman/turboshrimp](https://github.com/wiseman/turboshrimp)
(API docs at
[http://wiseman.github.io/turboshrimp/com.lemondronor.turbosh...](http://wiseman.github.io/turboshrimp/com.lemondronor.turboshrimp.html)).
I've also got an Android app (written in Clojure)[1] and a desktop app that
uses the CamShift tracking algorithm with OpenCV, which lets you select a
target of interest and then will continue to track that target[3].

The AR.Drone is still a really nice, relatively hackable robotics platform.
Running Linux and having USB lets you do things like connect an RTL-SDR
dongle[4] and display an overlay of nearby aircraft on the drone video
stream[5].

[1]
[https://github.com/wiseman/shrimpdroid](https://github.com/wiseman/shrimpdroid)

[2] [https://github.com/wiseman/turboshrimp-
tracker/](https://github.com/wiseman/turboshrimp-tracker/)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In6KFGakGGw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In6KFGakGGw)

[4] [http://lemondronor.com/blog/indexphp/2013/4/cheap-ads-b-
on-a...](http://lemondronor.com/blog/indexphp/2013/4/cheap-ads-b-on-amateur-
drones)

[5] [http://lemondronor.com/blog/indexphp/2013/5/augmented-
realit...](http://lemondronor.com/blog/indexphp/2013/5/augmented-reality-
display-of-air-traffic-for-drones)

~~~
robotresearcher
Well-featured ROS drivers are available for the Parrot drones:

[https://github.com/AutonomyLab/bebop_autonomy](https://github.com/AutonomyLab/bebop_autonomy)
[https://github.com/AutonomyLab/ardrone_autonomy](https://github.com/AutonomyLab/ardrone_autonomy)

these are quite well-used in the research community.

------
drauh
Seems like an awesome addition to the Aerial Robotics Coursera (taught by
Vijay Kumar at UPenn).

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/robotics-
flight/home/welcome](https://www.coursera.org/learn/robotics-
flight/home/welcome)

