Developed by Makers Simone Castellani, Giovanni Intorre and Andrea Toscano as a Master’s project at the Universita’ degli Studi of Milan, Comelicottero is a quadcopter driven by an Arduino Yún (ATmega32U4) and wirelessly controlled from any PC or mobile device. Aside from its on-board Arduino, Comelicottero is equipped with an accelerometer and gyroscope tasked with handling its stability through a PID-based command system. From take off to landing and everything in between, the ground station communicates with the flying apparatus over Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, the user can manage and monitor all incoming data from their drone through a gamepad attached to the laptop running custom software. The Makers decided to swap out the Bridge library for an efficient Python script on OpenWRT-Yun in order to maximize the Yún’s capabilities. Moving ahead, the Makers are looking to finalize their autonomous navigation system, which is currently undergoing testing due to magnetometer interferences with the motors’ magnetic field. As our friends at Arduino note, the sketch and all of its documentation will be made available on GitHub and released with GNU license in the near future. Until then, watch it in action below!
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