Hovercraft for "You Design It" project

[AndrewM]

Thanks to everyone who voted and sent me messages on my You Design It project.  After this weeks voting it looks like we will be building a hovercraft style of robot.  I have an interesting idea for the robot base that I am going to try out.  While I wait for parts and construction materials, I have another question for the design that I need feedback on.

What should the primary purpose of the hoverbot be?  What is its function?  Give me some ideas.

If I get enough ideas I'll throw up another poll to pick one or two primary functions.  Please remember that it is a hoverbot, so obviously the primary purpose can not be to climb trees or anything that would be overly expensive (laser guided anything, etc).

[frank26080115]

words coming to my mind are snow, avalanche, search and rescue, beacon

[Spoil9]

You said nothing real expensive, would a small group be over your budet?
Like building 3 or 4 for open water autominus search and rescue?

[AndrewM]

The problem with search and rescue is determining what needs to be rescued.  How does an autonomous robot know what a human is?  That is the million dollar question.  Facial recognition has tons of money thrown into by private companies and governments, but if the face is not viewable at the very specific angle it is no good.  You could do form recognition, but in the snow or in the water the form is going to be atleast partially covered.  Plus a person can not only have a thousand different body styles, but also will be positioned differently.  Heat variances from the terrain could work, but there you still need a way for the robot to know the difference between a person in need of rescue, a person who just happens to be in the robots search vector, and people actually searching alongside the robot.

I'm hoping for a robot that is relatively easily duplicatible by another hobbiest, not a multimillion dollar government contract.

[AndrewM]

Now if airman00 gets his speech recognition tutorial written before all is said and done with the You Design It project, we might be able to throw in audio tracking of words such as "Help" using a small array of microphones.

[cooldog]

http://www.instructables.com/id/Autonomous-wirelessly-controlled-hovercraft/


might take a look at this for ideas

[AndrewM]

http://www.instructables.com/id/Autonomous-wirelessly-controlled-hovercraft/


might take a look at this for ideas

Thanks for the link.  I like the variable pitch props they are using for lift, if the propellers I ordered don't cut it I will have to give those a try.  Best of all (for my tastes) is they used carbon fiber in the structure.

[frank26080115]

i was thinking of listening for sound, and also considered thermal imaging if body heat can be detected through snow.

wireless camera would definitely be good

[AndrewM]

It just so happens I have a wireless camera floating around waiting for an application, and seeing as I don't live on a college campus with female dorms I suppose I can spare it for the hoverbot.   

Audio based search and rescue (ok, well "search for rescue") is an option, once again assuming airman00 gets his tutorial done or I get a wild hair up my butt and read one of the books I have on speech recognition.  Not sure on thermal imaging pricewise, but I will do some digging on plausability.

[Admin]

This should really help you, too:
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=2154.0

How about putting a wireless camera on it? Would be lots of fun

[ceruleanplains]

yeah... just watch the yaw rates vs. where you sit the camera.   otherwise you might get motion sickness