Hermes The Drone Carrier Pigeon
Team: Sean Peacock and Camille Tischner
Project
- Autonomous drone for delivering small packages.
- Project challenged us to learn more about topics we found interesting, such as facial recognition and drones.
- Uses facial recognition and object avoidance to deliver a small payload to a desired recipient.
- Has wide applications for hobbyists, military forces, and stores.
System
System Diagram
Software Diagram
Methods
Getting Started
- Assembled the drone.
- Built propeller guards.
- Set up Python for programming.
Object Avoidance
- Programmed drone to turn to an angle and go a distance.
- Tested stopping in front of objects and around objects.
- Wrote a program to avoid objects and get back on flight path.
Facial Recognition
- Built stick people as recipient models.
- Took pictures of stick recipient models and labeled data using Roboflow.
- Trained object detection model using YOLOv8.
Final Assembly
- Built camera harness.
- Combined camera and drone into one.
- Had fun.
Conclusion
Outcomes
- Programmed a drone that can autonomously avoid static obstacles.
- Created a computer vision model that detects recipients at 95% accuracy.
What We Learned
- Gained experience and knowledge with programming in Python.
- Learned how to work with and program real-time systems.
- Gained knowledge and experience with facial recognition.
- Improved communication and documentation skills within an engineering team.