We have a collaboration with Qualisys, a Swedish manufacturer of top of the line motion capture systems. Similar to us they are a passionate about what they do, are working on high tech products and to make it even better, they are located in Gothenburg, just a couple of hours away by train. If you are not familiar with motion capture systems, it is a system that can track objects with reflective markers in space using high resolution cameras. The precision/accuracy is very good (sub millimeter) and can be used to track more or less anything such as the movements of a human body or the position of a robot, for instance a Crazyflie. The position of a Crazyflie is calculated by the MoCap system and by sending it to the drone via radio, it can fly autonomously.
We are super happy of getting the opportunity to work with MoCap systems and making it an integral part of the Bitcraze eco system. We have already added support in Crazyswarm for the Qualisys system and soon there will be a tab in the Crazyflie python client for basic autonomous flight using a Qualisys system. We will release a passive MoCap deck in the near future that will make it easy to attach reflective markers to a Crazyflie in a well known configuration, see this blog post for more information. Further more we are looking at making an active marker deck that utilizes Qualisys’ active marker technology to both position and identify an object at the same time.
Recently we spent a day in the large lab of Qualisys. We played with the LPS system in a larger set up and experimented with passive MoCap deck configurations and finally tried to fly a swarm.
Martin and Tobias configuring MoCap decks
Unfortunately we ran out of time and we tried to push the envelop a bit too far so we never managed to fly the full sequence without crashes, on the other hand, getting that close in a couple of hours is not too bad. Even though the full swarm did not work out we learned new things and had a lot of fun. Thanks Martin and everyone at Qualisys!
If you are looking for a motion capture system and want more information about Qualisys, please do not hesitate to contact us or Qualisys.