Drones and Rovers Knowledge Base

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Drones and Rovers Knowledge Base

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RDDRONE-FMUK66 flight management unit (FMU) reference design is the foundation used to build industrial robotic drones, rovers, and other small autonomous vehicles. This reference design runs PX4, the de facto standard for industrial-grade drones, and gives you freedom to develop your own robotic vehicle. Furthermore, the FMU is versatile and can run other open source or proprietary flight stacks. It is used to control and direct the navigation and real-time response to its environment. It is adaptable to many airframes and vehicle types, including ground and water-based robots. It performs sensor fusion, including GPS and other positioning inputs for autonomous navigation to mission way points. The open, extensible platform supports many additional sensors.
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The KIT-HGDRONEK66 kit provides the mechanical and other components needed to evaluate the RDDRONE-FMUK66 and adds BLDC motor control capabilities and a mechanical platform, which it can be mounted on. This developer kit may be used as part of, and contains the components needed for the HoverGames coding challenges. It should be noted that this is a professional developer kit, not a complete functional system and includes no software. The flight management unit (FMU) is supported by the business-friendly open source PX4.org flight stack. In addition, a separate suitable hobby-type LiPo battery and country-specific telemetry radio will be required. When assembled the frame has appropriate additional space in order to mount other components such as an adapter for Rapid IoT, NXP Freedom boards, or a companion computer such as i.MX 8M Mini to be used as a vision processor running Linux and ROS. The HoverGames drone and rover development platform is very flexible, fully open for development of robotics, control algorithms, security networking and communications protocols, and can include another add-on component, companion computer, software, or associated solutions.
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NXP’s Rapid IoT Prototyping Kit is a comprehensive, secure, and power-optimized solution designed to accelerate prototype and development of an IoT end node. Rapid IoT integrates 11 NXP devices (microcontroller, low-power connectivity, sensors, NFC, secure element, power management, interface) in a small form-factor hardware design, and combines it with proven software enablement (drivers, RTOS, middleware, cloud connect) and a web IDE with GUI-based programming. Rapid IoT provides the easiest and fastest path for anyone to take their connected thing idea to a proof-of-concept.
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How could your drone support coast guards, firefighters,  and rescue teams? Could it function as first aid kit? Or can it even prevent or predict natural disasters like floods? HoverGames contest "Search and Rescue" will bring the answers! Stay tuned on www.hovergames.com and pre-register for the second challenge starting in March 2020.
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The recently updated UAVCAN V1.0 protocol is an open lightweight protocol designed for reliable intra-vehicular communication in aerospace and robotic applications over CAN bus, Ethernet, and other robust transports. NXP drone team works to provide reference designs and promote the adoption of high reliability silicon solutions for use in Drone, Rover and similar Robotics applications.    Modern industrial drones have advanced far beyond the popular DIY hobbyist and consumer camera drones. These new era industrial-grade autonomous systems are now used to provide safety-critical tasks, from search and rescue to medical transportation and delivery. We see that systems like these begin to require many additional sensors connected by a highly robust and functionally safe CAN bus network.    UAVCAN 1.0 addresses the challenge of deterministic on-board data exchange between systems and components of next-generation intelligent vehicles: manned and unmanned aircraft, spacecraft, robots, and cars. In addition to its use in drones other small robotic systems, it can be used in industrial applications and control systems. The updated UAVCAN V1.0, which builds upon lessons from the V0 specification, is also intended to be taken through a formal standardization process.   As the largest global semiconductor supplier to the automotive industry, NXP has modernized the vehicle network with CAN and CAN-FD silicon. UAVCAN is similarly poised to transform the networks of modern software-definedsmall robotic vehicles. Networks for industrial-grade drones are becoming more complex as the number of sensors and distance between sensors and fight controllers increases. Furthermore, low-latency deterministic networks are key to safety-critical systems. However, commonly used short-range buses such as I2C and SPI interfaces are not as robust and cannot handle the distance and growing complexity of the network. In comparison, CAN-FD offers data rates from 2 to 5 MbpsBPS and their robustness has been well proven in Automotive applications. Because of the priority based bus architecture it means many devices can be connected while managing real time peripherals such as motor controls. Multiple busses or transports can be connected to enable redundancy.    In the new V1.0 specification, provisions are made to allow for abstraction of the lower layer protocols from the actual functional use. This makes it easily adapted to different use cases or for other functional domains. By changing the datatype-name definitions, the UAVCAN V1.0 protocol works equally well for a PX4 Drone or a completely custom device such as a micro-spacecraft. A major update in V1.0 is not only the support for modern higher speed CAN-FD hardware interfaces but also the ability to use it over other types of physical layer protocols. UAVCAN V1 is in development now and NXP is pleased to support its development by working with the community and providing engineering resources to enabled this improved standard. This is a standard open to everyone. No licensing or approval of any kind is necessary for its implementation, distribution, or use.   In order to better reflect the applicability of the standard not just to drones, but now to many different networks and vehicle types, the name UAVCAN can be interpreted as  Uncomplicated Application-level Vehicular Communication And Networking. For additional reading, a high-level overview of the protocol is provided in the article "UAVCAN: a highly dependable publish-subscribe protocol for real-time intravehicular networking".
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Fight Fires with Flyers Whether man-made or natural, fires are difficult to predict and control. Fires cause billions in damage, destroy entire towns and forests and put countless lives in danger, including first responders at the front line. HOVERGAMES IS YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO HELP The objective of this contest is to build a solution that enables your HoverGames drone to assist fire fighters in their duties – in any way you can imagine, from wildfires to urban fires. The NXP HoverGames drone development kit includes everything you need to get started on your flying robot. What will you enable your HoverGames drone to do? Does your drone help coordinate firefighting teams? Does it deliver supplies or extend communications or logistics networks to difficult-to-reach areas? Scan burning buildings to pinpoint hot spots? Or does it detect and prevent fires before they start? To kick off your brainstorm, here are some ideas: Extend communications to difficult to reach areas Pinpoint hot spots Monitor emerging fires and potential restarts Track and monitor resources, animals, and people in danger Lead someone out of the wilderness Provide insights on situational awareness Deliver a resource to a trapped person, like a gas mask or a flare, or CB radio Allow only authorized access to the drone Identify and approve drone operators Identify other drones that should not be in the area
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