My Airship Fleet

[Tsukubadaisei]

As I promissed 2 weeks ago here are some pics from our Airship(unfortunatelly, no videos for now)
The ballons:





Behold my fleet of flying airship robots! The world will be mine to command and conquer!



The payload:





Each ballon has about 300L of He and can carry a payload of 150~160g.
The robot uses the reading of a sonar and PID control in order to keep the height constant. The actual movement is done by a pilot using a futaba RC transmiter.
The task of the competion is to fly the robot equiped with a wireless camera over a bunch of letters randomly distributed in an indoors envirioment. There will be another person(team member) in a separated room with a computer conected to the camera and this person will try to read the letters. The score is mainly given by the number of letters this person reads correctly, time spent and a few parameters related to the robot(weight, volume, techology, originality and visuals).
The competition happens every year in Japan but it is an international event. There will be cotestants from China, Russia, EU and US.
Things to do:
->60% of the programming is already done(motor cotrol and sonar reading and the PID control fuctions). I have to finish writing the interface between the reciver and controller.
->debug
->Fill more ballons with He. Spare ballons for test and training. The guys that are responsible for the ballon part already prepared 25 envelops that are just waiting to be filled(have I told you we are building an robotic army). Hellium and plastic are free(we are being sposored by 2 companies! both the ballon plastic and He are for free).
-> I still have to assembly a spare payload just in case.
-> Decide who is going to be the pilot(cool) and the letter-reader(boring).

Fell free to add any suggestion.

[Trumpkin]

that looks like a cool robot(s). good luck on your competition!

[Tsukubadaisei]

[youtube]v=yfWvo8wPflE&NR=1[/youtube]

A video of our airship is out. It is very short. It is out just because of one rule(upload a video of a working prototype before the competiton or you are out). The competition itself is going to be this weekend(march 22nd and 23rd). Then I will post the contest video.

P.S.: ADMIN I am trying to post the video but I keep getting this: "invalid youtube link" error message. If you dont mind could you fix my link? Here is the original webadress http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=yfWvo8wPflE&NR=1

admin edit: the problem was you had extra problem-causing text in that youtube link
[youtube]yfWvo8wPflE[/youtube]

[hgordon]

Tsukubadaisei -

That looks like a great airship, and a really like your propellors.  I have been working with a prebuilt helium envelope that carries closer to 500 liters of helium, but I have a somewhat heavier payload, with processor, camera, wifi radio, ultrasonics and compass. The project is briefly described here -

    http://www.surveyor.com/cgi-bin/robot_journal2.cgi/2008/03/13#148

The main difference from your design is that I have only 2 rotors, and instead use a servo to change the vector of the rotor thrust - this is a standard technique on larger unmanned airships.





This is a very interesting project, and a much safer way to explore 3-dimensional robotics, in comparison to helicopters, quad rotors, etc.

Good luck with your competition !!!

[Tsukubadaisei]

wi-fi that is cool stuff. you can pilot your robot from the computer plus you dont need a separate tv just for the camera, like my case. Your payload looks great. I wish I could build a bigger airship like yours but unfortunately I have some rules to follow.
By the way my payload got slightly different. I changed the propellers(6 blades -> 3blades) and my speed increased 50%. Also I got problems with the sonar: sometimes I cant get response because the sensor is not point perpendicularly to the ground. So I changed it for a sharp IR distance sensor. The response increased and my autopilot can fly even higher now(3m->5m). I will post an updated picture later.
Anyway good luck with your project you too.

[Tsukubadaisei]

Gentleman and gentleman(because we unfortunately dont have ladies in this forum),

my team and I won 1st prize the "All Japan Flying Robot Contest".
We won 20000\, a high end RC helicopter and a biometal servo set(they are very small and light so they are used in RC airplanes). I also got interviewed by Reuters.


http://www.indoorflight.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/  //Official contest blog
http://www.tsukuba-step.org       //team web page
http://ameblo.jp/tsukuba-step/    //team blog

Honestly our web pages still suck and you need to use babelfish if you dont know Japanese. But we have got lots of pictures and videos and I will be posting them within a week.

[airman00]

Gentleman and gentleman(because we unfortunately dont have ladies in this forum),

my team and I won 1st prize the "All Japan Flying Robot Contest".
We won 20000\, a high end RC helicopter and a biometal servo set(they are very small and light so they are used in RC airplanes). I also got interviewed by Reuters.


http://www.indoorflight.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/  //Official contest blog
http://www.tsukuba-step.org       //team web page
http://ameblo.jp/tsukuba-step/    //team blog

Honestly our web pages still suck and you need to use babelfish if you dont know Japanese. But we have got lots of pictures and videos and I will be posting them within a week.

wow nice job!!!

those are some nice prizes you got there

[ed1380]

nice job. you deserved it. is there going to be a translated version of those pages?

BTW we do have a female on the forums.

[hgordon]

my team and I won 1st prize the "All Japan Flying Robot Contest".
We won 20000\, a high end RC helicopter and a biometal servo set(they are very small and light so they are used in RC airplanes). I also got interviewed by Reuters.

Congratulations !  I look forward to seeing the photos.

[hgordon]

I just found this article on Reuters.  Was this the same competition ?

    http://uk.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKT33543620080324

[Tsukubadaisei]

I just found this article on Reuters.  Was this the same competition ?

    http://uk.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKT33543620080324

Bingo!!!!!

[Tsukubadaisei]

I finally have managed to get the some of the movies from the competition online. Sorry for being so late, my team is not very organized when it comes to photos and videos.
You can download and watch the 2 videos using the links below:

http://www.kumikomi.net/article/report/2008/09flight/P3210199.MOV
http://www.kumikomi.net/article/report/2008/09flight/P3210200.MOV

Our airship apeared in this kumikomi magazine (embedded devices magazine) and in the Tokyo newspaper
http://www.kumikomi.net/article/report/2008/09flight/01.html
http://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/technology/science/CK2008040102000086.html

Anyway, this is my final post about this topic. I did some radical changes on the payload, that were the key for my victory, but I will keep the secret at least for this year (because I am planning to participate again next year). And I have to move on because I have just got enrolled in another contest...

[Admin]

wow its really fast!

but your vids are short . . .