Dr. Lipsett Meeting #1: - ProstheticFalconry/Capstone GitHub Wiki

Buying prebuilt chassis or look up quadcopter instructable? Why buy one? What if it breaks? Need schematics, viability of 3D printing copies of bought model? Can 3D print assets of quadcopter to reconstruct whole chassis if needed.

What PCB are we using? RTOS, Beealeboard, and Sensors are okay ideas but what are we comfortable with?

Dr. Lipsett agrees outsourcing as much of the mechanical work as possible is good idea. What is max acceleration we want? This will drive the question of what motors to use.

Controllability of claw goes lower the stiffer the object, suggests our testing go on Nerf Balls to allow for positional error. What are we wanting to design, a quadcopter that is EMG controlled or one that will identify object. A bit of both obviously but likely that latter could be a large focus of project. Need two degrees of freedom for our claw, one for sliding, one for grabbing.

Supervisory controller will require video feed, what do we need? A Go Pro is overkill, need for high res video not high, as long as we have system that can interpret feed and issue commands. Do we outlay video commands to third person system? No, need video interpretation on the Beagleboard to allow quadcopter to make its own decisions, rather than depending on human operator to avoid obstacles.

Main point is, how do we tighten our specs to give us a clear idea of our project requirements.

Lots of resources online for integrating hobby motors with blades. Must assure aspects like chassis and motor performance balance. This tuning is minor technical challenge. Is this not covered by the flight controller? Yes, but we must calibrate controller to have even force controller rather than just a speed controller.

How much do we want to lift? 20g. Calibrating for higher has lots of design implications. Most sloppiness will come from joints of chassis and arm.

Overall Dr. Lipsett believes project is doable, however during testing we are invited to inquire with him again and see labs he is working in/on. Offers protocols he has for testing safely. Really stressing that point, most likely for good reason.

What are the breaking points in selecting a frame? Weight of the frame, stiffness is one but we can solve that somewhat with pbc piping and carbon fibre. Try to have as much of the system electrically implicated rather than loads of wires on project.

Safety precautions, metal ribbon thicker than piano wire to form a ring on quadcopter, so as not to be hit with a spinning blade in worst case scenario. Have an emergency stop button somewhere. Make sure to create proper pathway for Beegleboard shutdown so that we don’t destroy Beagleboard. Overall have as many safety backups as possible.

Dr. Lipsett has his own lab with it's own quadcopter testing area that we can use to test it.

Any 3D schematics available to us for the chassis itself? Probably exists, Google is our friend. What is the volume of our 3D printer? Unsure, nonetheless we can print in pieces if need be. What plastics are we molding with? Maybe not good for gluing, we can figure our an epoxy to glue project together. Overall, pleased with our project ideas. Come up with as quantifiable and as measurable a project charter as possible. Set up a priority with regards to these project objectives. Lots of objects will require some simple thinking to increase controllability (foam on claw inside to allow for some positional error). Make sure to have spare parts, likely to destroy something over the course of this project. Need a commitment from lab with regards to our budget regarding needed expenses. Want to prevent situation where lab is unwilling to fund our project further. Dr. Lipsett offer to be a TA of sorts for our project.