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College students build first-person flight controller prototype

THUNDER BAY -- Stephen Rouhiainen spends a lot of time building and flying remote control quadcopters and as an electrical engineering technology student at Confederation College, he knew he could build something better.
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Stephen Rouhiainen and Hannah Henderson, third year students in Confederation College's electrical engineering technology program built a first-person flight controller for a quadcopter. (Jodi Lundmark, tbnewswatch.com)

THUNDER BAY -- Stephen Rouhiainen spends a lot of time building and flying remote control quadcopters and as an electrical engineering technology student at Confederation College, he knew he could build something better.

He asked his classmate Hannah Henderson to help and together the pair built a prototype of a first-person flight controller for quadcopters as their culminating project as graduating students in the program.

And on Friday, their project was one of several on display at the Electrical Engineering Technology Demonstration at the college’s McIntyre building.

“Our goal was to make a streamlined, easy-to-use controller for first-person flight control,” said Henderson.

“Our project allowed us to translate our hand movements using an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and barometer to track our flight movements in and translate that to the flight path of the quadcopter.”

Henderson and Rouhiainen bought a standard quadcopter set and built it and the real work was designing and building the hand-controller.

“We had to use a microprocessor that had the capabilities to take in all the hand controllers and then translate to be processed through code and through external components to make it all work together,” said Henderson.

Quadcopters are often equipped with a camera and used for filming in movies or at sporting events where a camera needs to get in close without interfering with the game.

The traditional controllers are often bulky and heavy.

“Instead of having a controller around your neck or a controller from a box, you can actually have fine, precise movements using your hand,” said Henderson. “It’s more accurate and lighter to use.”

Other projects on display included an automatic guitar tuner, a voice-controlled robotic assistance device prototype and a fuel inventory control and monitoring system.

Electrical engineering technology professor Ray Mayer said the students spent the last four months planning, designing and producing prototypes that build upon what they learned in the program.

“The students go through quite a variety of courses by the time they get to this last course and they are given the freedom to select an area of interest. The requirement for that is they build on what they’ve learned and take that a little bit further, so there’s an element of research as well,” said Mayer.



 

 





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