his feature allows the drone to maintain a specific distance above the terrain either using the GPS data or downward facing lidar sensor. This technology helps the drone to fly as much as possible near to the ground or anything.
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LIDAR sensor will measure the distance and make the drone to fly at a particular distance from an object where you can change the distance that you want to. This option will help you to fly the drone where the ground is completely sloped or not a flat surface. You can achieve terrain flight mode by using the GPS also. Terrain following works by maintaining a terrain database on the microSD card on the autopilot which gives the terrain height in meters above sea level for a grid of geographic locations.
Project Description:
FRAME:It can be a quadcopter or hexacopter or octocopter.Its depends on the payload that you want lift.The material of the frame also be selected based on the application as well as the payload where the frame should be able to bear the impact of the drone.
FLIGHT CONTROLLER:To make this drone you need a flight controller which should have IMU sensor on it.IMU(Inertial Measurement Unit) includes the three sensor such as Accelerometer,Gyroscope and magnetometer.Accelerometer will sense the proper acceleration of the drone.Gyroscope will measure the rate of change of angular velocity.Magnetometer measures the direction of the drone
LIDAR SENSOR:It will measure the distance and velocity at the distances from 0 to 60 m with the accuracy. The sensor data can received through I2C port or pwm signal with the time of less than 0.2 seconds.
GPS MODULE:The external gps module will have the on board magnetometer(compass) with it, which tells direction of the drone also helps to fly in the write direction during the auto mode.GPS measures the location of the drone by measuring the time taken for signal traveling time from the satellite.
POWER MODULE: Power module is used to power the flight controller board.Its nothing but the voltage regulator.The battery what we are using it can not able to give exact 5 voltage which very much required for the FC.Power module it has on board voltage regulator which regulates voltage from higher voltage in to 5 voltage.
ESC:Electronic Speed Controller used for controlling the speed of the BLDC motor.ESCs comes with the two different types of firmwares. One is BLHeli another one is SimonK.BLHeli versions are most widely used for multicopters.SimonK ESC mostly used for fixed wing.
BLDC MOTOR:Here you can use BLDC motor for producing thrust which will help the drone to fly by overcoming the drag.
PROPELLOR:Its a device a which converts the rotational motion into the thrust.propeller is made up of airfoil design which will cause the pressure difference due to that propellor will move upward direction along with the drone.
BATTERY:You can use lipo battery as a power unit.Battery size will be changed according to the drone size.This type of battery gives you high energy with less weight
TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER:2.4GHZ TX and RX.It should have minimum 5 channel.
POWER DISTRIBUTION BOARD:It will distribute the battery voltage into all the esc equally.It has parallel circuit on it.
Project Implementation:
Fix all the parts in the frame properly.The flight controller should be fixed properly into the center part of the frame which helps you get more stability
Sensor should be fixed properly at the downward side where it can able to detect the terrain without any obstruction.
Connect the arduino board to the arduino software and upload the programming logic on to the board.
Connect the battery to the power module and open up your mission planner which you have already downloaded.
Install the stable firmware to the flight controller board.
Now do all the mandatory calibration with the help of mission planner software.
Do autotune for the more stability where you don't need to give PID values manually.
Now can go for test flying.
Software requirements:
Mission planner.You can download this software from the internet for free, since it is an open source software.The Flight controller should be calibrated for stable flight,it is done by this software.
