This week I worked with Bhavik to get the MPU6050 up and running and investigate some basic Kalman Filter logic to fuse its gyroscope and accelometer data together to get precise 3-DOF measurements for the drone. I started by soldering header pins to the MPU6050 then wired it up according to a schematic we found on a SparkFun guide. Then, we loaded some basic example code that showed us how to interface with the device via I2C and poll raw angular velocity and linear acceleration data. We could then do some basic trig to figure out the euler angles using the linear acceleration data and do some basic integration to convert the gyro data into euler angles. We plan to continue work on a Kalman Filter based approach to fuse these measurements together along with a dynamics model of the quadcopter in order to get precise, non-driftin measurements of the euler angles of our drone at all time. I also worked with Bhavik and Gaurav to finalize a parts list for the drone and place some preliminary orders for the devices we will need (sensors, Teensy, drone motors + ESCs, etc.)
I am currently on schedule and will be focusing on figuring out more of teh Kalman Filter + tuning the process and measurement noise in order to get very accurate readings of our euler angles