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HoverGames is starting up their third competition. This year's challenge is Sustainable Food Ecosystems. It has added a rover, the Buggy3, to the drone used in the original competition (see figure). To find out more about the latest competition and hardware, I talked with NXP's Iain Galloway.
The new Buggy3 and existing HoverGames drone are normally controlled by the RDDRONE-FMUK66 PX4-based nav system. The new addition is the NavQ+, which is based on NXP's i.MX 8M Plus system-on-chip. This has AI acceleration and hooks for cameras. All of the software is open source.
The competition is a bit opened and while the kits can be purchased by anyone, those provided for the competition are based on proposals that need to be submitted now. The idea is to show the feasibility of ideas rather than complete working solutions.
Bosch Sensortec also has signed on to the competition. It's providing the BME688 gas sensor, but this is more than just a simple sensor. It has its own on-chip AI acceleration that can be trained to identify different gases.
HoverGames has extensive online documentation in addition to that found on the company site as well as sites like the PX4 autopilot. The hackters.io site manages the latest HoverGames 3 challenge. Prior competition entries can be viewed as well.
Stay tuned for more upcoming videos on HoverGames 3.