Captain Buzz: An All-Smartphone Autonomous Delta-Wing Drone

Abstract

Fully autonomous hobbyist drones are typically controlled using bespoke microcontrollers, or general purpose low-level controllers such as the Arduino[1]. However, these devices only have limited compute power and sensing capabilities, and do not easily provide cellular connectivity options. We present Captain Buzz, an Android smartphone app capable of piloting a delta-wing glider autonomously. Captain Buzz can control servos directly via pulse width modulation signals transmitted over the smartphone audio port. Compared with traditional approaches to building an autopilot, Captain Buzz allows users to leverage existing Android libraries for flight attitude determination, provides innovative use-cases, allows users to reprogram their autopilot mid-flight for rapid prototyping, and reduces the cost of building drones.