A.R.Drone Developer Guide - Abstract

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3.4 The AR.Drone Control Engine - only for Apple iPhone
The AR.Drone control engine (aka. ARDrone engine) provides all the AR.Drone applications
for iPhonewith common methods for managing the drone, displaying its video stream and
managing touch/tilt controls and special events on the iPhone.
It is meant to be a common base for all iPhone applications, in order to provide a common
drone API and user interface (common controls, setting menus, etc.). The Control Engine API
is the only interface to the drone from the iPhone application. It is the Control Engine task to
acces the ARDroneLIB .
The AR.Drone Control Engine automatically opens, receives, decodes and displays video stream
coming from toy using OpenGL routines. Only one AR Drone Control Engine function need
be called inside application for displaying automatically the incoming video stream. Another
function allows getting a status of this process.
The following flight parameters are superimposed on video:
• AR Drone battery life will be displayed on top right
The following controls are superimposed on video:
• At the bottom, a take-off button when landed or a landing button when flying
• On the left, a settings button and a zap (change video channel) button
• On the top, an emergency button, which will stop the AR.Drone motors
Special events can occur when in game, and trigger warning messages :
• battery too low
• wifi connection loss
• video connection loss
• engine problem
User can be requested to acknowledge special event message on touch pad.