Embedded Lab

Mihir Garimella is participating in the 2015 Hackaday Prize with his Firefly, an ARM Cortex processor powered low-cost flying robot with autonomous navigation.

Firefly robot

Firefly changes this. Firefly is a low-cost (~$200), open-source flying robot platform for first responders. It includes a base layer of generic algorithms for completely autonomous flight—algorithms for avoiding obstacles and efficiently searching for targets—that are based on how organisms in nature solve the problems of perception and navigation. Users can plug in application-specific modules containing sensors (e.g., thermal cameras for finding people or gas sensors for finding fires or hazardous chemicals) that work with this algorithmic layer to autonomously accomplish different tasks.