Fly a Drone with your Hand

This is a video of the Leap Motion controlled drone simulator that we took to the Big Bang Fair at the NEC. Thanks to  @TheIET and @UCLEngEdu for giving us space on their stand. I think all the children really enjoyed finding the Pokemon that we placed around the landscape. The general idea was to teach them the value of using drones for search and rescue as they hunted down the Pokemon.

I created the video above to show how the Leap Motion control of the quadcopter works. You can see the Leap Motion sensor glowing at the bottom of the screen. As I move my hand up and down, the quadcopter either gains or loses height. This is done by picking a centre point about 10cm above the controller. If I put my hand above this, the aircraft gains height proportional to how far above this point my hand rises. To descend, I go below the 10cm point, but the response has been weighted so that you can climb faster than you can descend.

In order to move around, I tilt my hand in the direction I want to go. Forwards and backwards translate the aircraft in that direction. Left and right do the same, but with the addition that translation left is mixed with 50% rotation left, otherwise it would be impossible to point the quadcopter in any direction other than North. The technical term for this is coupled aileron and rudder (CAR), which is a technique usually employed on fixed wing aircraft. For this reason, the flying style with this control system is more like flying a fixed wing aircraft than a multirotor. Finally, the altitude lock PID controller is used to hold the height. This is apparent when I tilt forwards to move, but maintain the same height. As there is no throttle control, this would not be possible otherwise. When I move my hand up and down, it's actually the altitude that's currently locked in that changes.

Anyway, that's the science part, let's go find some Pokemon.