I saw an interesting video about the first drone that flew on Mars. They programmed the flights in advance and it then executed them autonomously. I think that is even more impressive, since it would not have been possible to intervene if something went wrong. At the time the data was received, the drone already landed
IIRC that was part of the mission? They wanted to push themselves to see what could and could not be done with a very strict budget and cheap commonly available parts and tools.
That’s basically what spin launch did. They went and bought just consumer parts (not even the ones NASA could get/build) and put them into their centrifuge.
All of that with no GPS to get the location of the drone. They relied on a camera under the drone to basically act like an optical mouse sensor to follow the location of the drone.
Snapdragon took care of image processing, guidance processing, and storing flight data—with readings 500 times a second—while the microcontroller was in charge of navigation and running the helicopter’s motors.
It’s kinda mind-blowing that the same hardware from my trusty s5 (that is currently gathering dust in a drawer somewhere, rip) powered flight of a drone on Mars.
I am not downplaying the supreme engineering of the mars rover team, especially because there is no GPS on mars, but DJI has pre-programmed drone flights that work with their consumer drones, called missions.
Well they used a camera to track features on the ground for navigating, but then flew into a sandy area with to few features and crashed xD To be fair it was never intended to leave the initially planned area in the first place. And they made the most out of it, the drone is now a lil weather station reporting temp and pressure
The rovers themselves have to do the entire landing (called EDL in NASA speak) autonomously. The process takes 11 minutes so, likewise, by the time we hear the report that EDL has started the rover is already on the ground.
I saw an interesting video about the first drone that flew on Mars. They programmed the flights in advance and it then executed them autonomously. I think that is even more impressive, since it would not have been possible to intervene if something went wrong. At the time the data was received, the drone already landed
It’s pretty amazing our first try at a fully autonomous helicopter on another planet flew and landed successfully 71 times. Rest in peace, Ingenuity.
Built with such a tiny budget that they used cell phone parts
IIRC that was part of the mission? They wanted to push themselves to see what could and could not be done with a very strict budget and cheap commonly available parts and tools.
It worked surprisingly well
They blasted a bunch of phone hardware with radiation and picked the ones that held up
They then build a custom Linux system and called it a day
That’s basically what spin launch did. They went and bought just consumer parts (not even the ones NASA could get/build) and put them into their centrifuge.
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Just this month they broke a 2 year silence.
Linky
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All of that with no GPS to get the location of the drone. They relied on a camera under the drone to basically act like an optical mouse sensor to follow the location of the drone.
And that’s using the same hardware as you have in your phone. Not similar, the same.A snapdragon 801. Such as used in Galaxy S5, from 2014.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_devices_using_Qualcomm_Snapdragon_systems_on_chips
https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/stories/2021/04/23/smartphone-chip-powered-nasas-historic-flight-mars
It’s kinda mind-blowing that the same hardware from my trusty s5 (that is currently gathering dust in a drawer somewhere, rip) powered flight of a drone on Mars.
I am not downplaying the supreme engineering of the mars rover team, especially because there is no GPS on mars, but DJI has pre-programmed drone flights that work with their consumer drones, called missions.
https://developer.dji.com/doc/mobile-sdk-tutorial/en/basic-introduction/basic-concepts/missions.html
I’ve been thinking about setting up a mission for my drone to fly every week to gather data about what my neighborhood is like throughout the year.
Well they used a camera to track features on the ground for navigating, but then flew into a sandy area with to few features and crashed xD To be fair it was never intended to leave the initially planned area in the first place. And they made the most out of it, the drone is now a lil weather station reporting temp and pressure
The rovers themselves have to do the entire landing (called EDL in NASA speak) autonomously. The process takes 11 minutes so, likewise, by the time we hear the report that EDL has started the rover is already on the ground.