Brennan Cain

Software Engineer

Category: REU at UCSD

This is a chronicle of my project development and experience at the University of California, San Diego Research Experience for Undergraduates.

PYNQ-copter’s Maiden voyage

This hexrotor was designed using the Xilinx PYNQ board. The system currently has an open-loop controller, but the other members of my group are working toward integrating an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and barometer for a closed-loop controller. What sets this apart from other small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is that all computation is handled within

Into the Caves

On Sunday, the lab took a field trip to the Anza-Borrego mud caves to collect data to test a simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm and create a ground truth using LiDAR. I was not on the SLAM team, so I instead went with the rest of the group to have fun and crawl around underground.u00a0

Assembled Hexcopter with Controller

The chassis for the hexcopter came in and I assembled it today. We ordered a DJI Flamewheel 550 which is a medium sized hexcopter with all DJI propulsion systems. We hooked up the ESCs to an ardupilot controller with telemetry radio radio and made a short test flight in the show that all of the

PWM Generation and Progress

The last couple of weeks, we’ve been working on learning about FPGAs and controls. This week, we made progress on the architecture of the FPGA as well as how to communicate between different IPs. We decided on a few structural componentsu00a0 such as to place the sensor processing to motor mixing in a single IP

Canyon Day

When I accepted the REU at UCSD, I really did not know what I was getting myself into. I knew that I might be making work trips around to different fields of study, but I never expected to end up hiking through canyons with some of my coworkers just for fun. This morning, we headed

New lab, new state, new project

This week I shipped out to San Diego, California to take part in the NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates program hosted by the Engineers for Exploration group at the University of California, San Diego. I am part of a group of 10 undergraduates working on engineering research projects for the next 9 weeks. I am