A friend and I bought cheap chinese quad and eliminate drift + stabilize + direct it using a camera placed on top.
We used a Syma x20, a nanoquad with significant drift, yet relatively stable in altitude as it has a barometer, and a camera placed on my ceiling to keep the quad in field of view.
The setup:
- Using an nRF24 + Arduino to send control messages to the quad.
- An Aruco marker placed on top of the quad for pose estimation.
- Meanshift/KLT for tracking whern aruco detection fails.
- An oversimplified PID control loop to stabilize depth + position.