I have been trying to decide where to set my sights for my first DIY UAV.
My thought was to reward myself for finishing the model plane project (a 5′ wingspan, Balsa/fiberglass, gas powered, 30 year old, bought from an estate sale and missing half it’s bits scale Cesna plane kit) by embedding it with sensors and micro controllers to be able to experiment with autonomous, mobile robots in my own artworks.
Now I am more of a mind to leave the plane undone and build a quadracopter.
It offers way more flexibility and chance for faster design cycles as well as being more suited to my lifestyle. I have been without a place to make dusty messes since I turned my workshop studio into an office.
This project is the best I have seen:
Robust Robotics Group | CSAIL Main/Visual Odometry For GPS-Denied Flight.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/rrg/index.php?n=Main.VisualOdometryForGPS-DeniedFlight
I follow the goings on at http://diydrones.com and so am thinking of starting with the arducopter: http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/
Just sayin’.