Hi,

I'd like to create a Flight Control System using visual feedback with ArduCopter from DIYDrones as an airframe. My main area of interest is attitude stabilization with visual information in indoor environments.

What I plan to do is:

• buy the ArduCopter airframe featuring a 16MHz Atmega1280, 3x gyro, 3x accel, 3x magneto
• add 4 sonar / IR sensors for wall detection
• add a RGB camera and a video transmitter
• add Xbee for communication (real-time quad to PC telemetry and PC to quad control commands)
  

I hope to implement image-processing techniques in my PC to be able to control the attitude of my quadrotor in real-time. The control system would be onboard, the PC would only send camera-estimated attitude info to the quadrotor. I'd also like, and hence the question here, to build a simulation and visualization of the whole system (including sensor measurement simulation).

Can I benefit from using ROS in my design / simulation / visualization? I'm working on the project only by myself and would like to have some results in a year from now.

Thanks for any suggestions helping me to achieve my goals.