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 Krzysztof Bosak on September 8, 2009 at 3:00am -
Thanks for encouragement. Will make retuning and a movie when weather allows (this time FlyCamOnev2 died again inflight despite being ext powered, rrrrrrr).
I will try to make sure in the next flight that the altitude bands are strictly obeyed.
I am comfortable with 200m. I would rather move the altibands for the future months (use something like 80, 100, 120, 140m, this is 20m jump for every 200m flown). This is not simply 'based in my setup', this is just an observation of what typical easyglider and easystar does even in manual mode, when we are not pushing it. But in order to make sure if this is difficult or not, let's watch the other results.
I think the overall 'learning curve' is too high for many, I believed we could focus on flat flying with increased precision this month.
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Comment by William Premerlani on September 10, 2009 at 6:09pm -
@Chris Bosak,
Your plots of altitude versus time for the T3 contest are very impressive. It looks like you are controlling the climb/descent rate for minimum time for the total route. Very nice.
Any comments about what you might do differently if there were strong updrafts and/or downdrafts along parts of the route?
Where I fly, there are some strong updrafts along the my typical routes. Today an updraft lifted my sailplane about 50 meters in 10 seconds, as measured by an onboard GPS logger.
I have a related question about winds. Clearly, if the straight line between two waypoints is parallel to the wind, either upwind, or downwind, the shortest time is to fly a straight line between the waypoints.
What if there is a side wind? Do you still fly a straight line for minimum time, or can you get there faster with a curved trajectory? My intuition is that a straight line is still the fastest, but I have not gotten around to proving it formally. Its a nice problem for the calculus of variations.
Best regards,
Bill Premerlani
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Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on September 11, 2009 at 12:08am
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During updrafts: the best that my invicible EasyStar can do is to cut the throttle. Then he sinks at around 1m/s.
You can increase the sinkrate to some 1.5m/s by disabling ESC throttle brake. But it there are more updafts, it will continue the mission with over-altitude. When under-altitude, it will apply as much throttle as it gets until it achieves some 4m/s climb. I am not over-complicating a simple platform that is for amateur photography.
Yes I am controlling the altitude between waypoints (linear interpolation).
I am using path-follower as explained in http://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-navigation-en.pdf
I never wondered which pattern is optimal as when you fly between obstacles, you MUST fly less or more along prescribed route no matter which route would be faster.
If we consider the groundspeed is the sum of airspeed vector and constant wind vector, the sum of the two is very well defined and constant. Therefore there is nothing shorter than straight line, where the groundspeed points from src to dest. If the airspeed is given (max length at given conditions and climbrate) the key is to maneuver with airspeed vector direction in such a way it sums up with wind vector to the optimal, straight-line groundspeed vector.
The real gliders don't fly straight only because they are trying to 'catch clouds' without deviating too much from the straight track. It is faster for a glider to fly far from the track, with serious nose down and catching all the updrafts in a row. But this would be insane mapping/AI enterprise for an autopilot since the real pilot is asking friends, analyzing cloud color, metars, plus experience of a good chess player...
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Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on September 14, 2009 at 3:22am -
Another weekend passes and no more entries, we really did set the bar high this time!
Krzysztof, will be high scoring on the league table at this rate, should he get all the points if no one else enters?
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Comment by Andrus Kangro on September 14, 2009 at 12:32pm -
Hi, imo, who completes the task deserves the credit, how else can it be. However, I doubt that Krzysztof will be only one to accomplish this, I am on it and probably others also. I'm wrestling with high bank angle and related loss of gps fix at the moment. Probably need to slow down at turns or to rely completely on gyroscopes for making most of the turn, will see.
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Comment by steve kloppenburg on September 16, 2009 at 10:07pm -
the reason I have not entered is that quite honestly it would take me an hour or more to enter these points in to my attopilot... the flight planning leaves a lot to be desired.
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Comment by steve kloppenburg on September 16, 2009 at 10:49pm
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ok I am programmed in.... ready for a flight tomorrow... I am not in this to win... just to enter and have fun.... so to me the rules and distances can be (and should be) whatever the person putting on the contest wants.... if I don't like it... I won't enter... so dream up whatever you want guys... we can try to fly it...
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Comment by steve kloppenburg on September 17, 2009 at 9:49pm
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try one.xlstry one.kml
There is my attempt. I definately have some tweaking to do on my gains etc. But it worked. Attitues were not hit and the time was about 500 seconds.
Here is the log file for anyone who likes to look at numbers
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Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on September 18, 2009 at 1:56am
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You are going so fast during dives that you would need really aggressive elevator down (things might get hairy).
Maybe let the prop spin, add lots of ballast to the ez and limit its airspeed in the settings.
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Comment by steve kloppenburg on September 18, 2009 at 6:48am
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OK thank, I did increase the elevator gain because it was lagging greatly.. I actually increased all gains even the throttle gain because it is not holding the airspeed I have programmed in. Once I can get it to hold the airspeed I want I will turn it back a bit.... and adjust the airspeed between sections like you say... as I go down in elevation I could pull it back. Thanks for the tips I am giong for try #2 this morning.
I am not likely to shave 200 seconds off my time however so I am really doing this to tune my plane better ;-)
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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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