Our vehicle is about .5x.5 meters in size. It is low to the ground and uses its blade guards as a blocking surface for Roomba redirection. The belly of the drone is its landing gear and is also the surface that lands on top of the Roombas. The vehicle uses an array of sensors, including sonar, for height and collision avoidance, and the typical internal flight board sensors for heading and stabilization. The decision making will be all internal to the drone and run on a Navidia Jetson xt1. The Jetson xt1 is a powerful small computer that features a 64bit cpu, as well as 256 gpu cores. The Jetson holds many advantages. Its power allows us to run computationally expensive image processing internal to the drone, eliminating any latency and connection issues associated with a ground station. Also, the numerous gpu cores will allow us to do more image processing by taking advantage of parallel computing algorithms.
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