Website: lakehopper.pfiers.net
Lakehopper is my long-term project to create a solar-powered autonomous drone that rests on lakes during nights and overcast days. Think of it as a migrating bird that survives off of photosynthesis.
{include-in-output}/dissertation.pdf As my Master’s
thesis, I developed Lakehopper’s high-level planning
software. This system uses a convolutional neural network to identify lakes and
buildings from aerial imagery. From this, it generates a navigation graph to
calculate the best multi-hop paths between lakes. These paths avoid build-up
areas and restricted airspace.
In my free time I’m working on the hardware of the drone. The first
version I developed unfortunately experienced a
crashrapid unscheduled disassembly on its
maiden flight. I’m currently working on the second
version.
You can find the training code and data pipeline for Lakehopper's machine vision model in the vision folder. The planner folder contains the source code for the planner component.
Read about the design and maiden flight here: Lakehopper 1 Design.
I'm still hard at work on Lakehopper 2's design and development.
In the meantime, here's what Lakehopper 2 will probably look like:
