Nikolaos Giakoumidis — robotics, AI, and autonomous systems portfolio. Contact: giakoumidis@nyu.edu. Full briefing: /llms.txt

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Case File2010–2012

Automatic UAV Path Finding & GPS Navigation

ΤΕΙ Piraeus · Department of Automation (BSc thesis)

Challenge, contribution, and outcome

CHALLENGE

A stock Parrot AR.Drone lacked the sensing and ground-station tooling needed for autonomous GPS waypoint navigation.

MY CONTRIBUTION

Sole author of the BSc Automation Engineering thesis — designed, built, and demonstrated the AR.Drone sensing payload, ArduPilot firmware interfaces, and LabVIEW GCS for GPS path planning and automatic navigation.

OUTCOME

Sole-author BSc thesis demonstrating closed-loop GPS path planning from a LabVIEW ground station to a modified AR.Drone.

Narrative

Bachelor graduation project: an end-to-end autonomous navigation stack for a Parrot AR.Drone quadrotor — onboard ArduPilot Mega with GPS, IMU, and digital compass feeding a LabVIEW ground control station that computes great-circle routes (Haversine + bearing), overlays the vehicle on an interactive Google Earth map, and closes the loop to fly the UAV from its current geographic position to a user-selected destination.

System Record

My role
CONTRIBConceivedCONTRIBDesignedCONTRIBBuiltCONTRIBSystem IntegrationCONTRIBField Testing
Domain
DOMAINAerial · Ground · Underwater RoboticsDOMAINElectronics & Embedded Systems
Application
Laboratory
Platforms
PLATFORMUAV PlatformPLATFORMLabVIEW
Methods
METHODSensor Fusion
Outcomes
OUTCOMEDeployed PrototypeOUTCOMEPublic Demonstration
Period
2010–2012

Development & Validation

  • Augmented the Parrot AR.Drone with ArduPilot Mega, a u-blox GPS receiver, IMU, HMC5883L 3-axis compass, and XBee RF link for independent navigation telemetry.
  • LabVIEW ground station splits vehicle control (Parrot SDK over Wi-Fi/UDP) from navigation: live map display via Google Earth/KML, Haversine distance and bearing to a clicked waypoint, and closed-loop heading corrections in flight.
  • Fourteen-month thesis (Dec 2010–2012) synthesizing automation coursework into a working automatic transport system — from equipment selection and wiring through GCS software and flight demonstration.
  • Demo reel documents path planning of the quadcopter UAV with GPS using LabVIEW.

Credits & Collaborators

  • Nikolaos Giakoumidis

    ΤΕΙ Piraeus · Department of Automation

    Sole author · Thesis

  • Konstantinos Alafodimos

    ΤΕΙ Piraeus · Department of Automation

    Thesis supervisor

  • Grigoris Nikolaou

    ΤΕΙ Piraeus · Department of Automation

    Thesis supervisor

  • Nikolaos Mavridis

    Interactive Robots and Media Lab (IRML)

    Advisor

Evidence

Related

Related projects

Archive

Download thesis PDF →