Six Degrees of Freedom Omnicopter With Ardupilot

Modern multirotors are very maneuverable but are mostly limited to hovering in a single orientation. [Peter Hall] has gotten around this by building an omnicopter drone with six motors mounted in different orientations on a collapsed tetrahedron frame.

The shape of the frame consists of six tetrahedrons all joined together …read more

Continue reading Six Degrees of Freedom Omnicopter With Ardupilot

Analyzing Water Quality with a Pair of Robots

To adequately study a body of water such as a lake, readings and samples need to be taken from an array of depths and locations. Traditionally this is done by a few researchers on a small boat with an assortment of tools that can be lowered to the desired depth, …read more

Continue reading Analyzing Water Quality with a Pair of Robots

A Hackable Drone Without All The Wiring

Drones have come a long way in the past decade, and a lot of the pioneering work that made them mainstream was done by individual hackers and small teams. This often involves cobbling together components into flying crow’s nests of wiring. To streamline things a bit for hackers, the team …read more

Continue reading A Hackable Drone Without All The Wiring

Autonomous Boat For Awesome Video Hyperlapses

With the ever-increasing capabilities of smart phones, action cameras, and hand-held gimbals, the battle for the best shots is intensifying daily on platforms like YouTube and Instagram. Hyperlapse sequences are one of the popular weapons in the armoury, and [Daniel Riley] aka [rctestflight] realised that his autonomous boat could be …read more

Continue reading Autonomous Boat For Awesome Video Hyperlapses

Autonomous Air Boat vs Lake Washington

Autonomous vehicles make a regular appearance around here, as does [Daniel Riley] aka [rctestflight]. His fascination with building long-endurance autonomous vehicles continues, and this time he built an autonomous air boat.

This craft incorporates a lot of the lessons learnt from his autonomous boat that used a plastic food container. …read more

Continue reading Autonomous Air Boat vs Lake Washington

Skid Steer Mows Airport Grass Autonomously

Sure, mowing the lawn is a hassle. No one really wants to spend their time and money growing a crop that doesn’t produce food, but we do it anyway. If you’re taking care of a quarter acre in the suburbs it’s not that much of a time sink, but if …read more

Continue reading Skid Steer Mows Airport Grass Autonomously

Hackaday Podcast 032: Meteorite Snow Globes, Radioactive Ramjet Rockets, Autonomous Water Boxes, and Ball Reversers

Hackaday Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams recorded this week’s podcast live from Chaos Communication Camp, discussing the most interesting hacks on offer over the past week. I novel locomotion news, there’s a quadcopter built around the coanda effect and an autonomous boat built into a plastic storage bin. The …read more

Continue reading Hackaday Podcast 032: Meteorite Snow Globes, Radioactive Ramjet Rockets, Autonomous Water Boxes, and Ball Reversers