SmartAir: Automatic Vehicle Control System

With the creation of 3G and 4G cellular connectivity for IoT devices, I realized that devices in even rural areas would now be able to access the power of the internet. One such device that could benefit greatly from this technology is the drone. Actually, many vehicles located far from their home base are capable of utilizing this technology. 3G can now be utilized to control these devices automatically and make them more intelligent. That is where our project, SmartAir, comes in. This add-on device can turn any preexisting IoT drone or vehicle into a "smart" and easy to control vehicle, even for non professionals.

Let's see an example of our device in play. Say you have a drone built, capable of carrying payloads such as vaccines to rural parts of india. And say you need to disperse this technology in the future to villager or people who do not understand how to fly a drone or how technology works. This device would make control so easy. Our device can take simple user input and print directions to a console. The developer of the drone can just convert these directions into actual motor commands.

Here are the features of our device:

1.) An onboard GPS system can stream the vehicle's current position, speed, and altitude to a Google Map plug in on a website or browser.

2.) To make the drone or vehicle go to a certain destination, the user can simply plot a marker on the map. Our device will use this to tell the vehicle where to go.

3.) When a destination is not selected, a user can text the device basic commands such as "Go forward", "turn left", "rise", or "Drive backwards". The device will then send these commands to the drone or vehicle.

4.) Onboard camera streams live footage to the website.

5.) Automatic Landing and Positioning: When landing, the device slows down and sends an image of the ground to Google Cloud where it can then identify certain landmark features. The user can then select one of these features for the drone to automatically and safely land onto, or the terrain vehicle to drive towards.

6.) Weather warning system: If the device is coming towards incoming inclement weather, it can direct the drone to automatically land itself safely.

Sensor Wiring:

To begin, we must connect the GPS chip (which has a built in barometer and speed sensor) to our Raspberry Pi.

Here are the proper wiring schematics: