Introduction

Hi everyone!

This blog is started today, 2013-07-04 (a little late admittedly), to document our project; the ArchCopter.

So; who are we, what is the ArchCopter?

First things first:

I, who am writing this, is called Jens Walker. I'm the project supervisor for the ArchCopter project. I'm currently studying towards a masters degree in engineering physics and a bachelors degree in computer science, in parallel, at Umeå University. This reflects farely well my major interests in life; mechanics and electronics. I've completed 3 out of my 5 years so far. But enough about that.

So, what is ArchCopter you ask?

Short story:
An autonomous flying platform (i.e. a Hexacopter) for collecting data relevant to archeologists. (ARCHeologists, hexaCOPTER, get it? heh.)

Long story:
It all started this spring, when I was talking to one of the Vice Director of Master´s Programme in Engineering Physics and biggest sources of inspiration in the department of Physics, Krister Wiklund. Apparently a colleague of his, Klas Markström who works at the department of Mathematics and Mathematical statistics had gotten in contact with an archeologist, Phil Buckland, who had gotten interested in using a more high-tech approach for their line of work. Klas, who had gotten wind of  a quadrocopter that me and a few friends were building in our spare time, gave this as a possible platform for photography and perhaps other interesting sets of data aswell. Said and done, Klas talked to Krister, who talked to me, and the project was born.
As the spring progressed, we agreed to organize it as a project that could be included into my masters degree. However we both quickly reached the conclusion that this project would require more than my sole efforts if it was to be realized within a reasonable timeframe. We split the project into six different parts and I went on a recruiting spree (Think: Ocean's Eleven) and before long the team of master's students was assembled:

Jens Walker, Masters programme in engineering physics year 3 - Project supervision and construction
Anton Bahrd, Masters programme in engineering physics year 2 - Construction and camera system
Emma Zäll, Masters programme in engineering physics year 3 - GPS and proximity detection
Erik Löfgren, Masters programme in engineering physics year 3 - Magnetometers
Alexander Olsson, Masters programme in engineering physics year 2 - 3D reconstruction of topology
Albin Hübsch, Masters programme in interaction design year 2 - Interface

And so, as the spring term ended we started working on the project and here you can follow our progress!