New Kit Transforms Drones into Testing Environment

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The French company Parrot has launched a development kit for designing advanced applications for drones. Just attach the Parrot S.L.A.M.dunk (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) to a drone, plug it into the power source and flight controller and you’ve transformed your drone into an intelligent robot.

The S.L.A.M.dunk is particularly suited to an environment with no GPS or numerous obstacles where its S.L.A.M. software can be used to help the drone understand and navigate its environment.

The kit can be used to create autonomous and obstacle avoidance drones and robots.  It provides developers a familiar environment to prototype solutions such as autonomous driving and 3D mapping.

Another option is to use the on-board stereo camera and sensors for data gathering. It has advanced software applications based on a simultaneous localisation and mapping algorithm.

Whilst drones are the primary market for the kit, it can be used for a much wider set of “robots”, flying wings, articulated arms and roving robots amongst others.

According to ITWire.com, the Parrot S.L.A.M.dunk weighs 140 gr and has a NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor, a fish-eye stereo camera with a 1500×1500 resolution at 60fps, an inertial-measurement unit, an ultrasound sensor, a magnetometer and a barometer.

Development can be done within this environment and tested right away.

The kit is powered by Ubuntu and the Robot Operating System.