Indoor Autonomous Drone

## Problem

GPS doesn't work indoors. Warehouses, hospitals, disaster zones — the environments where autonomous drones could help most are exactly where satellite positioning fails. Indoor autonomy demands the drone perceive and localize itself using only onboard sensing.

## Solution

A drone that fuses optical flow, camera vision, and inertial data to estimate position and navigate autonomously in GPS-denied environments — with the perception and control loops running on embedded hardware onboard.

## Features

• GPS-denied position estimation via optical flow
• Camera-based perception for navigation
• Sensor fusion of vision + inertial measurements
• Custom embedded firmware for real-time control
• Autonomous flight without external tracking systems

## Tech Stack

## Challenges

• Drift accumulation in optical-flow position estimates
• Real-time constraints on embedded compute
• Tuning control loops for stable indoor flight

## Lessons Learned

• One firmware stack, two worlds: optical flow indoors, GPS outdoors
• Supporting both autonomous and radio-controlled modes made flight testing survivable