This is a project done in collaboration with Sean Pace and Zach Corse.
The mural drone is a tethered drone capable of painting murals or graffiti. The version in progress will aim to paint pixellated images in one color but then expand to a four-color version.
The idea of the tethers is to provide precise location control that can’t be achieved otherwise. The tethers are reeled in and out by stepper motors from three base stations. In flight tests we have been able to achieve centimeter precision of positioning for the drone.
Unfortunately, the compass on our drone failed during tests and we are now building a new drone that will be more capable for the purposes of this project.
You can see an early flight test with the tethers operating although operating indoors meant that we had significant stability issues in early flight.