Does it exist?

Thanks for reading and helping. I’m new and I have a specific application in mind but don’t know how to get started without many years of learning. I’m hoping some experts will point me in the right direction.

I’ll get right to the point.
I’m looking for a solution that will allow my quad Copter to execute the following:

  1. Fly to a preprogrammed colored flag in a open field, flag would be at random locations with muliple flags in the field
  2. Hover over the flag at a specific height and time span
  3. Fly back to a preprogrammed point in the open field
  4. Conduct a loop flight to retrieve all flags out of the field. Bringing all flags back to specific programmed point.

The problem:
The drone will be flying over uneven terrain,
There will be multiple drones executing the same task,
There will be obstacles to fly over and around.
The drone has to find the flags autonomously.

Is there anything out there that already exist to carry out the task or do I need to modify multiple platforms?

Thank you

Sorry, there’s nothing that will do this, but px4 does have the ability to fly to waypoints, If you send the video to the ground, and do detection there, and send the position back to the drone, px4 will certainly fly to the spot and hover.

But that’s the easy part, eh?

You would need to write a script with Dronecode SDK.

You probably need to find terrain data in the internet and then use that data when planning your mission.

You can use Dronecode SDK to automate that.
Check https://github.com/Dronecode/DronecodeSDK and https://sdk.dronecode.org/en/.

If you know the obstacles in advance you can program the mission in a way to avoid them. If not you need to look into obstacle avoidance which is not an easy thing.

Sounds like you either need to know the position of the flags or create your own detector based on computer vision techniques.

Great! Thanks for the info. I wanted to be sure I”m not duplicating someone’s work. The next step is to find some who knows how to write, change, and combine different software programming. Does anyone know how to find someone like that? I do’ think I can put it in the classifieds or on Facebook.

You can use the #jobs channel on the px4 Slack:

https://px4.slack.com
(to register: http://slack.px4.io)

There are (open source) projects out there that get you most of the way there, This pops red balloons: http://forums.openmv.io/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=310&p=1926&hilit=balloon#p1926
Something like this can visually find the flags, plan a route and execute a script, Then all you need on top of that is avoiding your obstacles. (flying over uneven terrain is easy with a distance sensor pointing downwards.
Avoiding unknown obstacles is the difficult bit, but if you know the locations just set up geo-fences and it will avoid those areas.

Perfect, that is exactly what I’m looking for. There is probably a way to take an arial 3D photo and upload it to a program so the vehicle can use that instead of a complex visual platform.