A small indoor drone that holds position and follows a subject without GPS.
Drones Indoor Flight Robotics Tracking
Indoors there's no GPS to hold position. I built a guarded micro-quad that uses optical flow and a rangefinder to hover in place, plus an onboard companion computer running vision-based tracking to follow a target.
What I Did
01Integrated optical-flow and rangefinder sensors for GPS-free position hold.
02Programmed tracking logic with computer-vision libraries on an onboard companion computer.
03Built on a guarded micro frame so it's safe to fly around people indoors.
Technical Highlights
01
Holding position without GPS
A downward-facing optical-flow sensor tracks ground texture to measure drift, and a rangefinder holds altitude, so the drone can hover in place indoors.
02
Onboard vision tracking
A companion computer runs the tracking: it finds the target in the camera feed and sends position commands to the flight controller to keep it in frame.
Guarded micro frame with the camera and electronics stack.
Gallery
Full kit — drone, goggles, controller and backpack.Frame plate modeled in CAD.
