Comment by Grant West on August 6, 2012 at 6:15pm

Did the article say what sensors they used? I read it but didn't see anything that said how they were actually detecting the ground.

Moderator Comment by Mark Harrison on August 6, 2012 at 6:27pm

@Grant, This was discussed a while back... they have an onboard representation of the entire Earth's terrain.

Comment by Maxime Carrier on August 6, 2012 at 7:00pm

Maybe we can use altimeter data from Google Earth to do the same thing

Comment by Greg Fletcher on August 6, 2012 at 7:25pm

The sensor making this work is GPS and probably baro altimeter, which APM already has. It's sensors that are needed, it's a large terrain data base on board the aircraft. The android had a terrain map in it's vast flash memory. I took a team over a year to do this?

Developer Comment by Michael Oborne on August 6, 2012 at 8:15pm

so what happens when that tree grows 5 more meters

Comment by Adrian Thomas on August 7, 2012 at 1:37am

I thought this bit of the report was telling:

"

The last flights were not without a few glitches that are often the hallmark of experimental flight testing and software development, ranging from computer cooling issues in the ground control station van, to a non-responsive left actuator on the DROID research aircraft. The latter challenge forced the project team to disassemble the aircraft’s wing, where they discovered wires had separated. Innovative repairs were made in the field requiring a creative use of the minimal resources available, and the aircraft was again ready to fly."

Seems very familiar 'Innovative repairs' - that will be twisting the wires together then...

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on August 7, 2012 at 4:47am

Innovative repairs:

Using zipties to hold the servo connectors together.

The un-innovative solution would be simply to use one of the many clips made to serve the same purpose. ;)

Comment by Jan Detlefsen on August 8, 2012 at 9:21pm

wonder if you could fly a drone on mars for greater range of exploration. Does anyone know the atmospheric data and if flying would be possible there?

Comment by Jake Stew on August 9, 2012 at 5:25pm

Can't fly on Mars reasonably.  Almost as much gravity with much thinner air.

Comment by John Wiseman on August 9, 2012 at 7:19pm

Jan, NASA has at least one project to do exactly that, though I'm not sure of its current status: http://marsairplane.larc.nasa.gov

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