Fall 2022 Progress Updates
A general summary of all the progress that was made in the Fall of 2022.

Pre-flight Planning
The idea was to generate a occupancy grid of campus that can be used as an occupancy grid.
- Used OpenStreetMap to generate a isolated 3d map of campus.
- Converted that into a 2D map using Rasterization techniques.
- Initially planned on using Octrees, but later decided not to due to the vast amount of memory that would consume.
- Has a separate page, which describes the stack in much greater detail.
/wiki/active-projects/drone-delivery/images/
The following is the point cloud generated from OpenStreetMap.
The Octree that was generated.
The occupancy gird that was generated.
Obstacle Avoidance:
- Migrate the code for Realsense camera from Python → C++
- Able to get depth matrix
- Can convert to occupancy matrix
- Implimenting a the D* and A* algorithms.
- There are issues in how the paths are generated, in that sometimes diagonal paths are taken over straight ones, even though the latter is possible to produce.
- To be improved in Spring 2023.
- OpenCV integration for detecting obstacles at a greater depth.
The Output from the A* algorithm we develped:
An example of an unideal path:
Hardware:
- Established mission objectives, such as flight time and pay load weight.
- Picked a drone kit, selected baterries, motor controllers, motors and propellers.
- A detailed document describing all the design choices that were made: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YcgpvD2AsxBpSHcqvRHN5PRzlyk0kKi2nl-Srrc2DXE/edit?usp=sharing
- Check the main page for details on what hardware components were selected.
Interfacing:
- Repaired the old drone, and interfaced a computer with it.
- Simulated pre-programmed fight paths using Gazebo and QGroundControl.
- Worked on importing OpenStreetMap data into Gazebo.

Research:
- Over the course of the semester, the team reseached several important topics and developed whitepapers, and plan documents.
- Deegan Osmundson: A* based navigation algorithms. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XcB0w0IvobgjAYehDYUqe3qoPYX0miRA/view
- Seth Deegan: Drone Delivery Tech Stack https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ekadDu0ogtgF6m-fK_AaudN6HzlPpPMSJ_rsvxW74-M/edit#heading=h.fliy5digh3xk
- Sooraj Chetput: Steps in implimenting the software stack for DD. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RyhzLklxlVaUF0ReHZfJ17z1Qm90ic8P/view
- Jake Harrelson and several Authors: Design and Implementation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Local Food Delivery https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YcgpvD2AsxBpSHcqvRHN5PRzlyk0kKi2nl-Srrc2DXE/view
Acknowledgements:
- Project Managers: Sooraj Chetput
- Obstacle Avoidance Team Members: Guna Avula (Lead), Deegan Osmundson, Chris Qiu, Ethan Baird, Mouli Sangita
- Pre-flight planning: Seth Deegan (Lead), Vincent Wang
- Research: Sreevickrant Sreekanth (Lead), Vignesh Charapalli
- Hardware: Jacob Harrelson (Lead), Evan Zher
- Interfacing: Sooraj Chetput (Lead), Atharva Bhide
Last modified February 15, 2023: fixing images (f597d17)