PANDAS: Point-based Autonomous Networked Drone Aiming System

Siman Zhang | James Lewis | Shree Singhal | Ryder Paulson | Patrick Donnelly | Burke Havranek

A laser-based tracking and charging system designed to enable continuous in-flight drone operation.

Installation Guide

1. Clone the repository.

git clone https://github.com/RyderPaulson/Group_2_PANDAS_Drone_Tracking
cd Group_2_PANDAS_Drone_Tracking

2. Create a v3.12.11 Python virtual environment. Conda is recommended but not required.
3. Install CUDA.

# check if cuda is installed
nvcc --version

If it is not installed, install the appropriate CUDA 12.6 version for your system from here. Set the CUDA_HOME environmental variable to your CUDA instillation.

4. Clone and install CoTracker3.

git clone https://github.com/facebookresearch/co-tracker
cd co-tracker
pip install -e .
pip install matplotlib flow_vis tqdm tensorboard
mkdir weights
cd weights
# download the online (multi window) model
wget https://huggingface.co/facebook/cotracker3/resolve/main/scaled_online.pth
# download the online (sliding window) model
wget https://huggingface.co/facebook/cotracker3/resolve/main/baseline_online.pth
cd ..
cd ..

5. Clone and install GroundingDINO.

git clone https://github.com/IDEA-Research/GroundingDINO.git
cd GroundingDINO

6. Implement this change from GroundingDINO
7. Finish the install of GroundingDINO

pip install -e .
mkdir weights
cd weights
wget -q https://github.com/IDEA-Research/GroundingDINO/releases/download/v0.1.0-alpha/groundingdino_swint_ogc.pth

6. Download the tiny weights from our Google Drive groundingdino_swint_ogc into the weights folder.
7. Uninstall PyTorch and bundled packages.

pip uninstall torch torchvision

8. Navigate to PyTorch's website and install get the correct command for installing PyTorch with CUDA 12.6 on your system.
9. Install remaining required Python packages.

TODO

Requirements

Core

1. PyTorch > 2.0.0
2. CV2 Latest
3. CUDA 12.6
4. CoTracker3
5. GroundingDINO

Jetson Specific

TODO Check on Jetson board for specific requirements.