RE: STEM Team 3 Gantt Chart

Feedback:

1. From "activities" point of view, your Gantt Chart demonstrates your understanding of problem solving skills by listing the meaningful activities to approach your final goal step-by-step. Though at this initial stage, there are things still unknown, some problems may be hidden, and a few tasks may be underestimated, you can always refine your Gantt Chart regularly to keep it meaningful throughout the project. 
2. Your Gantt Chart did not assign resource and dependency. Without clearly assignments, it's hard to determine whether you have fully optimized your schedule through "parallel working", or some overlapping tasks are actually feasible.
3. I suggest that you refine your Gantt Chart by adding those assignments, and I will discuss more details with you in class. 
4. In the mean time, you should start following your Gantt Chart and continue working on your project!

STEM Team 3 Gantt Chart

Summer Research Presentation

RE: Initial Planning & Coordination

• Project Description & Merits

Describe the project in your own words and list the possible contribution your project can have to advance the field of STEM or solve societal problems.

   - Our project is to design and develop a method of neutralizing an enemy drone, ideally without damaging it. The contributions out project could make to the field of STEM depends on the method we end up using to take down drones. However, the societal problems to be solved are the possible problems we may face in the future where drones are a big part of society, they could easily be used illegally; a method of stopping them is necessary.

• The original goal is not "without damaging" the drone, but not damaging the buildings or hurting people in the intercepting process. This goal has implications to the material and speed of the projectile.

• Group/Team Communication

Who will be involved in your project (team) and relevant projects (group)? How to communicate effectively with each other? What are the tools for project collaboration?

    - Our team consists of Henry and Eduardo, linked to the group of Adnan and Noah. A big goal in our project might be to make the drone neutralization autonomous and in order to do that, visual detection would be necessary, that's where Adnan and Noah come in. Discussion on how to develop a detection method would be how we collaborated. We'd need to update each other on milestones.

• Between team 2 and your team, you should define the hardware/software interface between your two systems clearly early on. It includes things such as 
• architecture: are both systems controlled by a single microcontroller, or both of them have their own microcontrollers and communicate to each other through some communication channel (and what's the physics communication channel?).
• What are the data (e.g., distance, 3D angles), clock, and control signals between the two system?
• What are the timing requirements (e.g., target location data needs to be updated every 1ms) for the communication?   

 

****** MISSING  Prior Work/Resource Inventory SECTION ******

 

• Technology Analysis

Identify the scientific and technical knowledge/skills involved in your project.

     - The knowledge involved in our project will vary depending on which path we go down for the take-down method. The definitely necessary knowledge includes a basic understanding of physics, VEX robot design and programming using robot c, as well as Parrot Drone controls whether manually or autonomously.

• Should be more specific. For example, if one of the options is shooting water packet/stream, you need to know the physics of projected water packet/stream. If another option is shooting ping-pong balls, you need to know the physics of a flying pin-pong ball in air (not ideal case any more). 

• Competence

Identify skill sets, technical competence in your group, and list the missing ones which need to be acquired.

     - Again, this depends on which method we decide to attempt. However, we have a working knowledge of both robot c and the drone programming which is similar to python. What's missing is  sufficient PID controller knowledge. 

• Safety

      - No risk.

• Both a flying drone and a projectile shooter have potential safety threats. You need to put that into your consideration at all time during the whole project course.

• Equipment, materials & budget

    - Equipment includes a parrot drone, VEX robot kit, laptop. It's unclear if any items will need to be purchased.

• So, you need to make a list of key components/parts, and conduct an inventory on Lab supplies.

• If Vex robotics system is not good enough for your project, you should identify other parts (such as high-speed/torque mortors) and kits.  

• Schedule

    - Our current main goal is to determine which area of drone take down we'd like to pursue, and then make a schedule for the coming weeks of working on that. 

• Star working to create a meaningful schedule!

Initial Planning & Coordination

• Project Description & Merits

Describe the project in your own words and list the possible contribution your project can have to advance the field of STEM or solve societal problems.

   - Our project is to design and develop a method of neutralizing an enemy drone, ideally without damaging it. The contributions out project could make to the field of STEM depends on the method we end up using to take down drones. However, the societal problems to be solved are the possible problems we may face in the future where drones are a big part of society, they could easily be used illegally; a method of stopping them is necessary.

• Group/Team Communication

Who will be involved in your project (team) and relevant projects (group)? How to communicate effectively with each other? What are the tools for project collaboration?

    - Our team consists of Henry and Eduardo, linked to the group of Adnan and Noah. A big goal in our project might be to make the drone neutralization autonomous and in order to do that, visual detection would be necessary, that's where Adnan and Noah come in. Discussion on how to develop a detection method would be how we collaborated. We'd need to update each other on milestones.

• Technology Analysis

Identify the scientific and technical knowledge/skills involved in your project.

     - The knowledge involved in our project will vary depending on which path we go down for the take-down method. The definitely necessary knowledge includes a basic understanding of physics, VEX robot design and programming using robot c, as well as Parrot Drone controls whether manually or autonomously.

• Competence

Identify skill sets, technical competence in your group, and list the missing ones which need to be acquired.

     - Again, this depends on which method we decide to attempt. However, we have a working knowledge of both robot c and the drone programming which is similar to python. What's missing is  sufficient PID controller knowledge. 

• Safety

      - No risk. 

• Equipment, materials & budget

    - Equipment includes a parrot drone, VEX robot kit, laptop. It's unclear if any items will need to be purchased.

• Schedule

    - Our current main goal is to determine which area of drone take down we'd like to pursue, and then make a schedule for the coming weeks of working on that. 

Drone Take-down Possibilities

Signal Jamming

- The article spoke about the secret service using signal jammers to either hack, send off course, or cause rogue drones to crash. Detecting the signals that a drone emits can also allow the drone to be tracked.

 - Signal Jammer

- Unknown due to it being illegal for civilians to purchase or use signal jammers.

 - Signal jamming would seem to be a more accurate means of interception. Focusing on the signals allows for tracking and hacking as well.

-  Not available for civilian use, therefore the effectiveness is unknown. Could easily interfere with other wi-fi or Bluetooth signals.

 - http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/03/10/secret-service-testing-ways-to-intercept-rogue-drones-with-late-night-flights/

- It would be very interesting to be able to work with signal jamming for drone interception, but that’s not possible.

Interception Drone

- It’s an automated drone that can visually detect any drone within range, will fly directly above the enemy drone and dangle wire into one of the enemy drone’s rotors, causing it to crash.

 - Rapere Drone

- “It won't be cheap like a DJI type drone. It will be priced as a professional tool - we don't want this to become a toy people can use to disrupt legitimate drone use.”

- Two minute maximum takedown time.

Autonomous, so there could be a lot of them without any operators. Camera pointing in every direction, which means immediate detection.

- This is just an idea at this point. The limited availability (only for professional use).

- http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/rapere-intercept-drone

- http://rapere.io/

- This sounds too simple to be interesting.

Hacker Drone

- A parrot AR drone equipped with a Raspberry Pi circuit board, a small battery, and two wireless transmitters. It seeks out the wireless signals of nearby parrot drones, and commandeers the control of the drone.

- Modified Parrot Drone - Approximately $110, not including the parrot drone.

- The ability to not only stop enemy drones, but control them as well.

- Requires assembly. Only works on Parrot drones (as I know of).

- http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/flying-hacker-contraption-hunts-other-drones-turns-them-into-zombies/

- https://github.com/samyk/skyjack

Net Gun

- It’s a Net gun. It’s a pressurized device that fires a net. - Net Gun

- $697

- Mobility, the net gun is about the size of a flashlight with a large head. Will not damage the drone. 45 foot range. Nets are reusable and very durable. Lightweight and mobile.

- Very costly. Requires human skill for accurate usage. Accuracy depends on user.

 - http://www.thenetgunstore.com/shop/

- If a cheap option is available, this would be interesting to experiment with, either attaching to a drone or a vex robot.

Summer Research - Henry

PID Control for VEX toss up

- PID stands for Proportional Integral Derivative
- It’s a software solution for controlling a system
-      

- Set point is the target value. i.e. the goal
- Process variable is start point
- Sensor reads the process variable
-

- The difference between the set point and the process variable is called the error
- The new process variable is found by multiplying the constant (pGain) by the error
- The process of determining the value of pGain is called Tuning
- The error is calculated by subtracting the process variable from the set point
- This is done in a while loop so it will keep calculating until the error is negligible, meaning the set point has been reached.
- pGain can determine the amount of time it takes for the set point to be reached, or if the set point will be reached at all (this is called Offset)
- Offset occurs because of “disturbances” which are anything that alters the system’s output.
- An integral is the area under the curve of a function
- Error is constantly recalculated
-

- Pseudo Code for both proportional and integral control with sample values. Gains have to be found experimentally
-

- Use of both proportional and integral control improves results in both time and accuracy.
- Derivative is the rate of change of the error with respect to time
-

- 

- PID makes it everything even better.
- Noise is quick, random changes in the input signal that creates rapid fluctuations in the error
- Can be caused by vibration or electrical interference.
- Depending on the problem, you may need to use a different combinations, maybe just P, PI, PD, etc.