How to create an Oculus Rift head-motion drone controller

Oculus Rift technology enables users to be engrossed in their own little worlds when wearing this augmented-reality device. Hand-operated controllers produced with Oculus Rift and drones operated from great distances may seem passé when viewing the video above. The application of this technology, as demonstrated here, customizes Oculus Rift in a new light through an open-source code to operate a drone with your head.

In the above video, a user operates a drone while wearing Oculus Rift Goggles. This user’s name is Diego Araos. He enjoys modifying drones and creating new ways for them to operate for fun as a “weekend project.” This venture allows for an integrated Oculus Rift head tracking and video feed option to be enabled. For this project, Araos used the Oculus Rift head-motion controller to manipulate an AR Drone 2.0. By wearing Oculus Rift Goggles and following Araos’ instructions, people can control the AR Drone 2.0 with their heads. When setup with this apparatus, by tilting your head this way and that, the drone will gain a steady course. The drone will even videotape the entire flight so you can watch a live stream of it from your computer.

By using an AR Drone 2.0 with Oculus Rift, Araos has created a code to enable this head-motion controller technology. You can download the code yourself here, and follow the instructions below if you want to accomplish this setup.

Steps to create your own head-motion controller:
1. npm install
2. bower install
3. coffee -wc -o . .
4. Download and run oculus-rest server (https://github.com/possan/oculus-rest)
5. node .
6. Go to your browser: http://localhost:3000/
7. Click on the drone that appears on screen, in order to activate it.
8. When ready press 'o' key, to activate Oculus Rift viewer
9. To take off the drone, press 'ENTER'
10. To land the drone, press 'ESC'

This code is based on his other project, AR Drone Swarm; it enables the simultaneous control of many AR drones that are hooked up to the same network. He is currently working on other comparable projects that pertain to AR Drones.

All codes that Araos provides are open-source, so if you have a drone and a pair of Oculus Rift Goggles, then get cracking on this awesome project.

Story via Gizmodo, Github