Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on April 12, 2012 at 11:08am

Hello to All,

Today evening, I have done two successful autonomous cross-country soaring missions with the ThermoPilot v6.3c and my Cularis e-glider. I have used the SARSEC mode: at a choosen altitude and position, I have actuated (in flight) the switch on channel 7, the ThermoPilot has automatically generated a four sectors pattern (500 meters wide) and stored the GPS wp datas as a flight plan in the memory of the APM. Then, the ThermoPilot has been set automatically in Cross-Country soaring mode (AUTO mode with Thermal Hunting feature) and the Cularis has been able to fly itself following the wp.

You will find below the logs of these two real flights.

Regards, Jean-Louis

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on April 12, 2012 at 11:10am

Below some photos taken during the Cross-Country soaring missions cited above:

Regards,

Jean-Louis

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on April 13, 2012 at 11:19am

Here a log of a real tests flights during a full autonomous Cross-Country Soaring mission done today with the ThermoPilot v6.3d and the Cularis e-Glider. You may notice that the gained altitude during the thermal hunt has been about 147 meters in the south sector of the generated pattern.

Regards, Jean-Louis

Comment by Daniel Nugent on April 13, 2012 at 9:21pm

Very cool! Thought of the idea two years ago! Had no idea how to approach it. I didnt have the knowledge and skill. The funny thing is, that plane was one of my choices for the project also. Haha. I love that someone else though of it and made it work!

Comment by Veikko Vierola on April 15, 2012 at 8:06am

Nice work, are u able to make it soar freely inside a geo-graphical box, like so that it would search thermals freely inside 1km x 1km box.

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on April 15, 2012 at 8:46am

Hello Veikko,

This now possible with the ThermoPilot v6.4, at this moment I am conducting real tests in flights in a 500x500m box, with a 50m AGL floor and a 200m ceiling (with the SARSEC mode) with my Cularis and the APM 2560 v1.4. These parameters are defined with the mission planner and special parameters set for the ThermoPilot.

i.e. below a thermal hunting box, a square of 1000x1000m size done with the SARGRID mode:

In the ThermoPilot parameter (called TP_xxxxx):

- the ceiling is defined with the parameter TP_MAX_ALT, here 200 meters,

- the floor is defined with the parameter TP_MIN_ALT, here 50 meters,

- the box size with the parameter TP_SARSEC, here 1000 meters,

There are others parameters which define the type of the patterns used for the thermal hunting:

- SARSEC = a four sector pattern (a kind of SAR sector pattern)

- SARGRID = a squared grid (as above)

- SARCYL = a simple cylinder defined by the radius, the floor and the ceiling.

Regards, Jean-Louis

Comment by Veikko Vierola on April 15, 2012 at 10:53am

That is very cool. How much engine power it is using normally during soaring? Have you tried to do an endurance test, can it stay in the sky like few hours at a time?

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on April 15, 2012 at 1:16pm

Hello Veikko, a long endurance flight with a minimum use of the onboard energy is my main target. I need to wait a bit to have the best weather conditions, I think that this will can be done in spring when the thermal upwards will be optimal...

Comment by Gilbert McGhee on April 15, 2012 at 4:22pm

This is very, very cool. I have a ton of questions about it.

1. How do you determine which way to turn into the thermal?

2. How do you determine the optimum bank angle?

3. How does the aircraft determine when it is time to leave the thermal and continue the flight?

4. How does the aircraft determine when a thermal is worth chasing outside the flight path, and how does it determine how far to chase it?

5. How does the aircraft respond to plain turbulence? (i.e. will a few bounces cause it to start searching or does it need something for a certain amount of time?

6. I know that this project is still in the alpha phase, but is/ can the code be put online because I would love to learn about how this works and hopefully contribute to the project. If you would like to continue going solo, that's understandable but I would still love to add some things to it and perhaps start up a new "competing" project with some other DIYD members with your code as a base and see where we both take it!

Sincerely,

GM

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on April 15, 2012 at 10:56pm

Hello Gilbert,

To aswer to your questions: In the ThermoPilot, I am applying my back experience from many years of RC gliding/soaring and also as a true glider pilot. To understand better the cross country soaring methods, I recommend you to read carefully the "Training for Cross Country Soaring" from the Dr Helmut Reichmann.

The glider stop to turn when three events occurs:

- the lift begins null or negative,

- the current altitude begins greater than the ceiling altitude preset in the APM with the mission planner,

- the altitude is greater than the delta-altitude of the track between two waypoints.

When the glider leave the thermal it continu to follow its flight plan.

At this moment the ThermoPilot is still in alpha phase, but it will be soon beta and I shall release the ThermoPilot hex code at the end of summer for some testers and experienced pilots in gliding/soaring and which have a similar setup than the mine: a good RC e-glider and a fully installed APM 2560 on board with a airspeed probe.

Regards, Jean-Louis

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