T3 Contest, Round 2--UPDATE: Deadline extended (and new contest previewed)
Also, here's a preview of next month's contest: Break the Stanford team's UAV altitude record of 7,142 feet by doing at least 24 circles with a 300ft climb and descent in each! (This won't really beat his official record, because there won't be an official judge there. But you'll get bragging rights, at least). I'll announce full details on Oct 19th]
The first Trust Time Trial (T3) contest was a great success. Lots of entries, nail-biting competition, awesome performances and lots of learning for all.
Now comes round two. The difference this time are as follows:
--Three laps
--3D waypoints. (must hit altitude targets as well as lat/long)
The prize this time is a Global Hawk kit.
Winning entries must be posted in the comments below by midnight PST on Sunday, October
Rules:
1) Must complete the pattern as shown above, totally autonomously. Go into autonomous mode before waypoint 1 and stay in for three laps. The four points are arranged in a square, with 200m on a side (obviously the two diagonal paths are longer). Any aircraft/autopilot allowed. It doesn't matter how close to the waypoints you get, as long as you pass on the outside of them.
2) Altitude must be within +-10m of given altitude at each waypoint. It doesn't matter what your altitude is in between waypoints. All altitudes are either above launch position or the contestant's specified "safety altitude".
3) Fastest time to complete three laps and hit the 3D waypoints wins. Must provide GPS track with timestamps and on-board video. (If you don't have/can't afford a small onboard videocamera like the FlyCamOne 2, we'll let it go this time. But in the future: video or it didn't happen!)
GPS tracks are best achieved with an onboard GPS datalogger, like the i-Blue 747 or smaller Sanav ML-7. But if you don't have one or don't want to add the weight, you can just capture the GPS track from your telemetry stream, although you'll have to figure out how to convert it to KML format to export to Google Earth (see below). If your Ground Control System has a built-in map+track function, a screen shot of that is fine, but it should be possible for people to check to confirm that your leg lengths are at least 200m.
Evidence data should include these four things:
1) Total time, along with aircraft and autopilot used. A photo of the aircraft would be nice.
2) Screen capture of path exported to Google Earth or an equivalent, annotated with waypoints and where autonomy began and ended. :
3) GPS datalog file, any format
4) Onboard video, embedded from YouTube or Vimeo. [Not absolutely required but requested]
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Comment by Vassilis on September 20, 2009 at 8:16pm -
@steve
Yes, the flight plan is basically circles at each waypoint with conditions to proceed to the next waypoint when a certain heading is reached. The radius of each circle is configurable through the flight plan.
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Comment by steve kloppenburg on September 21, 2009 at 6:29am -
nice! that would be nice, far as I know I can only progrm holding patter circles not entry and exit circles....
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Comment by Dean on September 21, 2009 at 4:01pm -
Steve - which gain did you try to increase? If you want to make navigation snappier, then some gains can be adjusted, and others should not be touched. I see I have a new e-mail from you so I will digest that first.
Atto navigation improvements have been on hold the last 6 months as export CRAP and IMU work are real life cloggers. There are some serious navigation improvements in the pipeline, as well as more user-friendly GCS-driven waypoint creation.
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Comment by steve kloppenburg on September 21, 2009 at 8:03pm
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cool stuff Dean we have already emailed about this and I appreciate the quick response as usual. I put my gains back to where I had it flying well. I had increased them as per an email from you and chris but I just put them in the middle of mine and yours and it's flying the best it has ever flown. So long story short I also made a typo putting my elevations in so the poor little star had to climb 75m instead of 25m.... lol... I am re-doing it all now... it should be much faster this time. I wont post my last one but I expect to make all elevtions now that I have increased my elevator gain.
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Comment by steve kloppenburg on September 21, 2009 at 8:30pm
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Dean for those of us excel challenged or just because it would be nice) it sure would be great to have the graphing automatic like the pap system. I am trying to plot my actual elevation to my waypoints and the gps elevations as shown on Vas's plot.... but it's way too much like work ;-)
I also plan to have my mentor with the Ardupilot try this out on wed.
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Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on September 24, 2009 at 4:20pm -
It would be cool to try out paparazzi, but as long as it is a linux-only, the ppl using AVR studio will be reluctant to try it out.
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Comment by Dean on September 24, 2009 at 5:40pm
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Steve - haven't you seen the KML utilities in the Atto GCS (top right of GCS window)? It takes your LOG.txt, gives the flexibility to select individual flight(s) from within that LOG, and then generate 3D .kml plots, and even opens them for you in Google Earth if you want. There are about 6 check boxes of config settings. For example you can choose to display only certain flight mode types (R/C, ARC, HARC, Auto) and wether or not to have the "curtain" view of the lines drawn from the path to the ground.
Check it out. No need to manually manipulate the LOG in Excel with TEXT functions.
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Comment by Dean on September 24, 2009 at 5:44pm
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David (aka bmw330i) and Steve - Atto has the same flight plan capability to fly a circle of defined radius and duration and altitude, then do another circle at any other radius/duration/location/altitude, then another circle, ad infinitum. Complete flexibility there. You can even set triggers to abort if a certain mAh upper limit is reached, and another trigger will cause a loiter at a waypoint until altitude is within 20m of target, just in case the altitude change was extreme and the UAV has not made the altitude change yet and you want to keep the UAV from proceeding to the next waypoint until altitude is reached. Example scenario is crossing a mountain.
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Comment by steve kloppenburg on September 25, 2009 at 7:35pm
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Dean yup I have seem them but it does not help with putting the actual path in with all the options available.
What I was referring to was the plotting abilities of the data saved by the pap system. For atto I just open it in excel and make a chart etc etc. but one day it may be nice to just say plot me the elevation over time graph please.... nothing urgernt there are much more pressing matters than that... just a comment.
ABSOLUTELY the atto is very powerfull in what it can do... it can do many things that are more practical in the real word of my work and I thank you for that!
flying these patterns like I say is for fun and I am not here to win, just learn.
I am very happy with my atto. It kickes butt... but at the same time I am not gonna lie the softaware is lacking in course mapping.
Anyway Dean and I have already discussed this though so I won't plug up the thread.... just know I am happy and can't wait to be happier ;-)
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Comment by William Premerlani on September 27, 2009 at 2:39pm -
After I recently released the UAV DevBoard firmware with 3D waypoints, it was not my plan to enter the latest T3 contest, because I thought I did not have the equipment, and because I thought it would be lot of work to change the gains and parameters. The default settings for the firmware is focused on saiplanes, where the name to the game is to gain and conserve altitude.
Then, a few days ago, I checked the rules again, realized I did have the equipment to enter the contest. I thought it might be fun to try.
So far, I've made 2 flights with MatrixNav in an EasyStar. The image is from the 2nd flight. The pattern is this month's T3 pattern, rotated 30 degrees clockwise. The flying field is nestled between two tree-covered ridges, with a strong wind from the west which gets funnelled into the football field just to the west. You can almost see the wind pattern from the flight track.
My first flight (not shown) was made with MatrixNav straight out of the box on an EasyStar, straight out of the box. The plane hit all of its waypoints and altitudes, but it took 893 seconds, because half of the time the EasyStar was gliding with the motor off. Much too slow for an entry.
So, for the next flight, I changed the minimum throttle setting from 0.35 to 1.0, to run full throttle the whole flight. The second flight time was 305 seconds, but it is also not a contest entry, because it missed the altitude targets. During the second flight, the EasyStar went up ok, but came down too slow. I realized afterwards that was because with the motor running all of the time (no gliding), the descent pitch needed to be a bit steeper than what I set.
So I have changed the altitude pitch control settings, and am ready for a third flight. Except it is raining now, and it is supposed to rain most of the week here in upstate New York.
Still, I thought there might be a few people who would be interested in my progress.
Best regards,
Bill Premerlani
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Season Two of the Trust Time Trial (T3) Contest has now begun. The fourth round is an accuracy round for multicopters, which requires contestants to fly a cube. The deadline is April 14th.A list of all T3 contests is here.
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