Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
22 Intuitive and Ergonomic Gesture-Based Drone Controller
 Adam Poindexter
Elaine Houha
 Channing Philbrick design_document1.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
photo1.HEIC
presentation1.pptx
proposal1.pdf
Problem: Current market available RF drone controllers are not intuitive to use for the average consumer.

Solution: Design an ergonomic, gesture-based control glove that would allow novice users to quickly and easily learn to control a drone.

Solution Components:
Gesture/sensor Subsystem:
Gyroscope: Controlling for tilt and yaw
Buttons: Trim controls, camera/video trigger, beginner/expert mode trigger, trick button
Analog button: Power/Thrust control
Accelerometer: Kill switch indicator - Over X G motions are ignored for Y period of time.
Arduino: Signal processing to convert sensor signals to control signals
RF Subsystem: The RF subsystem would come in two parts using XBee devices. The first would be in the glove which sends the control signals to a “base station”. The “base station” would receive the signals, translate them to the drone’s control system using the original controller’s hardware, and then project those signals to the drone.
Power Subsystem: Thin, flexible rechargeable batteries on the glove and a standard AA power pack for the “base station”
Processing Subsystem: One microcontroller on the glove and one in the “base station”.

Criteria for Success: Our project would be considered successful if we are able to control a drone from a gesture based control system with enough precision to navigate a basic obstacle course. This course would features turns, ‘gates’ at different heights, and a landing area. If a new user ( someone with limited experience flying drones) can successfully navigate the course faster with the glove than a standard controller with less errors then the glove would have succeeded in being more intuitive for a general user.

A reach goal would be further develop the signals used to be able to control several different types of drones from the same glove versus the only one predetermined model.

Assistive Chessboard

Robert Kaufman, Rushi Patel, William Sun

Assistive Chessboard

Featured Project

Problem: It can be difficult for a new player to learn chess, especially if they have no one to play with. They would have to resort to online guides which can be distracting when playing with a real board. If they have no one to play with, they would again have to resort to online games which just don't have the same feel as real boards.

Proposal: We plan to create an assistive chess board. The board will have the following features:

-The board will be able to suggest a move by lighting up the square of the move-to space and square under the piece to move.

-The board will light up valid moves when a piece is picked up and flash the placed square if it is invalid.

-We will include a chess clock for timed play with stop buttons for players to signal the end of their turn.

-The player(s) will be able to select different standard time set-ups and preferences for the help displayed by the board.

Implementation Details: The board lights will be an RGB LED under each square of the board. Each chess piece will have a magnetic base which can be detected by a magnetic field sensor under each square. Each piece will have a different strength magnet inside it to ID which piece is what (ie. 6 different magnet sizes for the 6 different types of pieces). Black and white pieces will be distinguished by the polarity of the magnets. The strength and polarity will be read by the same magnetic field sensor under each square. The lights will have different colors for the different piece that it is representing as well as for different signals (ie. An invalid move will flash red).

The chess clock will consist of a 7-segment display in the form of (h:mm:ss) and there will be 2 stop buttons, one for each side, to signal when a player’s turn is over. A third button will be featured near the clock to act as a reset button. The combination of the two stop switches and reset button will be used to select the time mode for the clock. Each side of the board will also have a two toggle-able buttons or switches to control whether move help or suggested moves should be enabled on that side of the board. The state of the decision will be shown by a lit or unlit LED light near the relevant switch.

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