There is one thing that has driven both the hardware/software and our enthusiasm forward in the last 13 years, and that is making demos! Whether it’s a new piece of hardware/deck for the Crazyflie or the integration with an existing software framework, it doesn’t matter, but we have got to show it and, by all means… it needs to fly!
We have used fairs, conferences, and online meetings as perfect opportunities to push the capabilities of the little Crazyflie to the fullest. Of all the development goals we set, those self-made deadlines and over-ambitiousness have pushed both the hardware and software to the limit. In this blog post, we will take a look back at all of those demos we’ve done in the past and what we have learned from them.
2013 – 2017: Hacker and Developer Fairs
One of the very first conferences we were invited to was Devoxx in the UK. This was back in 2013, and we flew the Crazyflie (1) with an FPV camera over the actual crowd (blogpost, video), which was something we had already been working on for about half a year before showing it at the conference (blogpost, video). A year later, at Devoxx France (2014), they let us fly at the actual exhibition and over the booths, which showed much better quality (blogpost, video)! Not sure if they would still let us do this at fairs, but back then it was a bit of a wild west :D.
By the time the Crazyflie 2.0 was released, we started going to Makerfaires and even visited 3 of them, all in 2015! At the Makerfaire in the Bay Area (blogpost), New York, and Berlin (blogpost 1, blogpost 2), we prepared an external positioning system with the Kinect 2 and augmented reality markers (ArUco) (blogpost). That was one hectic year, and not without issues with the demo itself along the way (blogpost), but it showcased the Crazyflie and pushed the Crazyflie Python library and client to a more mature state.
Once 2016 came, the ultra-wideband positioning hacks reached a point where we could start demoing them as well. At first, the positioning was still calculated offboard with a ROS(1) node and transmitted to the Crazyflie, which was first showcased at Makerfaire Berlin 2016 (blogpost, video) at the booth itself. Eventually, a live demo was given at FOSDEM 2017 in the actual devroom for Embedded, Mobile, and Automotive (talk page). The Flowdeck was also in development at that time, and we had a small tabletop demo at Makerfaire Shenzhen 2017, where people could press a button, and the Crazyflie would take off, fly a circle, and land again (blogpost, video).
2017 – 2019: Academic Robotics Conferences
From 2017, we made it a habit to also meet with our research users, so we started going to academic robotics conferences as well, starting with ICRA 2017 in Singapore. Here, we showcased the Loco Positioning System, where the positioning was estimated onboard, so no external computer was required to perform the calculations (blogpost, video).
At IROS 2018, we took it up a notch by joining our collaborator Qualisys, showcasing the Loco Positioning System for a swarm, Motion Capture-based localization, and the brand new Lighthouse positioning prototype (blogpost 1, blogpost 2). We also added autonomous charging to it as well, so it was a great deal of work! Maybe we took on a bit too much, but one thing is for sure—we learned a lot by doing it (blogpost 1, blogpost 2, video)! With ICRA and IROS 2019, we perfected the circling swarm demo so that it was fully autonomous. However, this time we only used the Lighthouse positioning system since it was a bit easier to set up (blogpost 1, blogpost 2, video). The computer still had to command which Crazyflie to start flying, but other than that, we didn’t have to mind it that much and had plenty of time to talk with the users.
2020 – 2022: Covid and the Home Lab
As everyone knows—and probably tries to forget—2020 was the year that Covid hit us hard, and we couldn’t travel anywhere anymore. For us, it was quite an adjustment period, as we had to find another type of motivation to keep moving forward and continue development. We introduced the concept of the home lab and gave online talks and tutorials to still show cool stuff with the Crazyflie to the world (blogpost, video).
In 2020, we all joined together to work on the Hyper demo, which was a showcase that demonstrated the Crazyflie could fly with three positioning systems at the same time, enabling it to fly all the way from the meeting room to the flight arena (blogpost, video). We also celebrated Bitcraze’s 10-year anniversary with the BAM Days, a full 3-day online seminar about all things Crazyflie, for which we and our collaborators prepared a whole range of different demos, including a Rust-based app layer example and a peer-to-peer onboard swarming example (blogpost).
2022-now: Back to conferences
At the end of 2022, we managed to go to fairs again, namely IMAV and IROS 2022, where we showcased the fully autonomous swarm demo as before Covid hit. However, due to the demos we conducted during Covid, we also added full onboard peer-to-peer communication. This enabled the Crazyflies to negotiate which Crazyflie could take off, which pretty much completely eliminated the need for an external computer. Moreover, the Crazyflies communicated their positions to each other, which made it possible for them to avoid collisions on the fly (blogpost, video).
We have shown this demo as well for ICRA 2023 in London (blogpost) and ICRA 2024 in Yokohama (blogpost) with different variations and the upcoming brushless version as well (blogpost). The demo is quite robust, but it’s great to learn about the quality of the new motors and props, the guard prototypes of the Crazyflie Brushless, and the flight stability. But as you know us by now, it is time for something different!
Soon – ROSCon 2024
We have been to ROSCon before, back in 2022 (blogpost), but now we will be going to ROSCon 2024 for the first time as exhibitors (blogpost). ROS is a framework that is used by many researchers, including our users through Crazyswarm2, but ROSCon is more developer-oriented, and there will be more companies present that focus more on industry than academia. This time we won’t show our swarm demo as we usually do, but we will be showing demos more in line with what is presented in the ROS skill learning session of the robotics developer day (blogpost, video), but we will be hacking around on the spot! So this will be something new for us to try out, and we are very much looking forward to it!
Developer meeting, 9th of October 2024
This blog post only represents a subset of demos that we have done, but we will go into further detail at the next developer meeting on Wednesday, the 9th of October, at 3 PM CEST! Please join us to learn about all the great demos we have done in the past, get a glimpse of the history of Bitcraze, and discuss why demo-driven development is so important in moving your development forward.
Check for information on how to join the meeting here on discussions: https://github.com/orgs/bitcraze/discussions/1565
See you there!