Inspiration
However captivating fireworks may be to watch, it comes as no surprise that these beautiful explosions leave dangerous toxins and metal particles in the air for hours and sometimes days afterwards.
The goal of 'Illumination Modulation' is to reduce air pollution levels and danger to wildlife in the UK by encouraging a less destructive method of celebrating. Similar to the approach now being taken up in other parts of the world, a full-scale drone light show would include potentially hundreds of drones with lights attached to brighten the sky.
What it does
'Illumination Modulation' proposes the use of drone light shows in the place of fireworks. This project uses one drone to demonstrate how a drone could be controlled to perform a light show. The video includes a demonstration made in Processing, showing how the drones would connect to the master drone and a concept of how the drones could move in unison.
How I built it
The demonstration included in the video was built using Processing, this is to illustrate how the drones would use sensors to ensure no collisions would take place and that all drones remain coordinated.
The concept of the project was to write and upload code to a Parrot Mambo drone which would control its flight patterns to make it perform a routine.
Challenges I ran into
The first issue we had was trying to get the drone to connect to the computer via Bluetooth, part of the issue was that the drone needed to be updated to connect properly,
We originally intended on using MATLAB to plan out the structure of the drone control program, this would then be translated to C code using Simulink. However, we decided against this method because this would have confined us to using only one drone and controlling it solely from a laptop.
After this we decided the best route was to use Python, this method required Ubuntu.
This brought us back to the point of being unable to get the drone to connect to the computer the code was on. This has been a major issue throughout the project, concluding in the drone being unable to be accessed. We would have liked to put more time into the code for the drone itself, however the connection issues held us back for a long time.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We are proud of getting the simulation to demonstrate what we had intended to do with this project.
What I learned
We have learned a lot about the theory of controlling drones, including how the rotors interact to allow the drone to move in different directions and how different drones interact to perform a routine.
What's next for Illumination Modulation
Ideally we would like to work on creating a program which can be used for multiple drones to interact in order to perform a routine, then progress towards adding more drones to the project with the goal of creating a light show which is comparable to a home fireworks display.
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