3D Robotics

Chris Anderson's Blog – January 2008 Archive (29)

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Curt Olson interview part 3: GPS simulation with FlightGear

Okay, now that we've connected our PC to our autopilot's GPS input, let's let Curt walk us through all the things we can do with FlightGear. Starting with this:



Q : Is there a way to use FlightGear to…

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Added by Chris Anderson on January 28, 2008 at 8:00pm — 2 Comments

Matt Chave interview, part 2: all about magnetometers

Matt Chave's CUAV project is a great example of custom autopilot building, but one of the most interesting parts about it is that it uses magnetometers--digital compasses--in addition to the regular accelerometers and gyros. In the… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 27, 2008 at 8:30pm — 2 Comments

Interview: Matt Chave and the CUAV project

For the second interview in our series, we'll go to Australia, where aerospace engineer Matt Chave has been developing a very interesting open source UAV that uses magnetometers in an interesting way (and he's using FlightGear for…

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Added by Chris Anderson on January 27, 2008 at 8:23pm — No Comments

GPS simulation hardware setup, part 2

In an earlier post, I discussed some of the options for connecting your autopilot to your PC for GPS simulation. I've now tried several of the options on our Basic Stamp autopilot, and I have some recommendations on what to do (and not to do).



Rather than try to… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 27, 2008 at 7:00pm — No Comments

Curt Olson interview part 4: more advanced UAV simulation

[In the previous installments of my interview with Curt Olson, I focused on using FlightGear for GPS simulation--you fly the plane around in the flight simulator and the software outputs GPS data to fool your autopilot into thinking that it's the plane in the flight simulator, so you can see how the autopilot responds to being off course. Now we're going to… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 27, 2008 at 6:54pm — No Comments

Blimp UAV: handling navigation indoors

The blimp UAV project is moving along nicely. We've picked a general size and selected most of the components. We've now decided to go with a PIC processor, rather than the Stamp, Propeller,… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 19, 2008 at 8:30pm — 8 Comments

Curt Olson interview part 2: we pause for a hardware moment

(part one of the interview is here. A followup to the post below, with some more specific advice, is here.)



Before we drill down with Curt on the specifics on one… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 18, 2008 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Interview: Curt Olson on FlightGear and UAV simulation

I'm delighted to start our interview series with Curt Olson, the creator of the cool open source FlightGear flight simulator and a UAV engineer in real life. When I started researching how… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 18, 2008 at 8:30am — 6 Comments

Our motto

"Because $10,000 $5,000 $1,000 $500 is too much to pay for an autopilot, especially one that doesn't do exactly what you want."

Added by Chris Anderson on January 17, 2008 at 10:30am — 4 Comments

Best way to simulate a UAV flight?

While it's cold and windy outside, the best way to test our UAVs may be simulations. As best as I can tell there are at least two ways to do this, but I can't say I really understand either of them well enough to implement:



  1. Generate synthetic GPS data with your PC's serial port, see what the autopilot does as a result.…
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Added by Chris Anderson on January 15, 2008 at 7:00pm — 6 Comments

Making a UAV fail-safe

A big part of the DIY Drones credo is keeping it safe, and by that I don't just mean adhering to FAA regs and staying away from built-up areas, but also keeping it safe for your expensive UAV! The truth, as we all know, is that computers crash and that aircraft flown by… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 14, 2008 at 11:03pm — 24 Comments

The Paparazzi UAV team's amazing conference demo

A mindblowing report from Hackaday:



"The 24th annual Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin is already off to a great start. The first talk we attended was [Antoine Drouin] and [Martin Müller] presenting… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 14, 2008 at 3:30pm — 5 Comments

Is the Arduino platform better than the Basic Stamp for UAVs?

Jordi has opened my eyes to the Arduino platform, which is being described as a "Basic Stamp killer". Is it a good candidate for autopilots? Well, let's look closer.



Arduino is an… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 12, 2008 at 9:30pm — 23 Comments

Basic Stamp autopilot tutorial, part 5

In my last tutorial, I showed you how to upgrade from the 12-sat Parallax GPS module to the much better (and cheaper) 20-sat EM406. Unfortunately, my instructions weren't compete and I've spent… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 12, 2008 at 7:12pm — 9 Comments

Announcement: pages for other UAV projects and autopilot code (by processor type)

By popular demand, I've added two pages on this site, linked to from the text box on the front page

Given the constratints of the social… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 11, 2008 at 11:00pm — No Comments

Which Multiplex powered glider makes the best UAV platform?

Like everyone else, we're huge fans of the Multiplex EasyStar, a cheap, sturdy and good-flying powered glider. It's a great aerial imaging platform (see our how-to… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 6, 2008 at 12:00pm — 11 Comments

New WowWee indoor copter is "autonomous"

At CES WowWee introduced the semi-autonomous micro indoor "Bladestar" copter, which uses IR sensors to stay away from celings, walls and, they claim, people. More, including video, at Gizmodo. Hackable?



WowWee also… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 6, 2008 at 8:25am — No Comments

Blimp UAV project: spec'ing it out

As discussed in the white paper, the aim of the blimp UAV project is to build a prototype for an indoor aerial robotics contest. This will require contestants to design, build and program a blimp that can navigate a course inside a gym-sized space and potentially do… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 6, 2008 at 12:03am — No Comments

Blimp UAV project: The beginning

Aside from building this site, my two big UAV projects are taking the Lego Mindstorms UAV to the next level (it's mindblowing, although I can't talk about it yet!), and building a prototype blimp UAV as a platform for a potential indoor aerial robotics contest.



This particular blog series is going to be about the development of the second of… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on January 5, 2008 at 11:00pm — 2 Comments

Reminder: keep your UAVs under four pounds

It looks like UAVs under 4lbs are going to be treated more lightly in the forthcoming FAA UAV regs. "Forthcoming" meaning 2010, of course ;-)


Added by Chris Anderson on January 5, 2008 at 9:17pm — No Comments

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