OAK on drones¶
Our amazing community has created several OAK on drones projects:
Team QuetzalC++ (OpenCV AI comp) - Warehouse inspection with autonomous drones - video
Team CVAR-U.P.Madrid (OpenCV AI comp) - Researching the autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) solution for catastrophic situations - video
Team QUTEagles (OpenCV AI comp) - Drone-based biosignatures detection system for planetary exploration - video
Augmented Startups built a gesture controlled drone and has 3-part tutorial on YouTube - video
To use OAK devices with systems like PX4 or ArduPilot, one would need to develop integration of our devices/hardware with such systems.
Here are a couple of examples of PX4 sensors that could be interfaced by ESP32/other MCU and communicated to OAK to get needed data or trigger a certain action:
Optical flow (requires a downward facing camera and a distance sensor)
For additonal useful information about OAK on drones projects you can check out our #drone channel on our
Discord server.
OAK ArduPilot integration¶
Rishabh Singh wrote a few OAK-ArduPilot integration applications like a follow-me app, obstacle avoidance app, and precision landing app. He also wrote 2 blog posts about the integration; Part 1 and Part 2.
Camera vibration¶
Camera vibrations can be a big challenge in applications such as drones, especially if you are using Auto-Focus color camera. To decrease the camera vibrations, we suggest firmly mounting the device on the drone. One could also consider adding shock absorption rubbers (eg. these) to decreate the vibrations. AugmentedStartup has also designed an OAK-1 anti-vibration mount for his drone project:
For drone applications we would also suggest Fixed-Focus color camera, more info here.
Got questions?
We’re always happy to help with code or other questions you might have.
