Week 10 – Drone Communication
Yuvan S -
Hello. Last week, I discussed the drone software. This week, I will talk about how the drones work together to connect and how this communication happens.
First, remember we have location data of where the drone is using the camera setup. The computer figures out the location the drones need to go. The computer sends this data to an ESP32 that is attached to the computer. This ESP32 is responsible for sending the data to the drones, of where each one needs to go. It does this through something called ESP-NOW. ESP-NOW is low latency and fast, so it’s perfect for this application. This ESP-NOW data includes where the drones need to go, and the current configuration and structure of the drones.
The drones take this position data and use it in their PID controller to calculate the error. This PID data is used in motor mixings, which depend on the data the computer sends about the configuration. All of this together allows the drones to know when and where to connect to each other. The computer needs to know if everything is happening successfully, so the drones also send more data back over ESP-NOW to the ground station ESP32. The ground station ESP32 sends this back to the computer. With this, the computer knows basic telemetry about the status of the drones. This entire communication process happens many times per second.
Next week, I will discuss what data I collected and why it is useful to collect such data.