A newbie's guide to UAVs
What is an amateur UAV?
A Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that has the capability of fully autonomous flight, without a pilot in control. Amateur UAVs are non-military and non-commercial. They typically fly under “recreational” exceptions to FAA regulations on UAVs, so long as the pilots/programmers keep them within tight limits on altitude and distance. Usually the UAV is controlled manually by Radio Control (RC) at take-off and landing, and switched into autonomous mode only at a safe altitude.
What do I need to make one?
- An RC plane
- An autopilot
- Optional: a useful “payload”, such as a digital camera or video transmission equipment
What type of autopilot should I get?
Autopilots in the amateur category typically fall into two categories: thermopiles or inertial measurement units (IMUs). Thermopiles are infrared sensors that measure the temperature gradient between the sky and the earth and use that to stabilize the aircraft. IMUs use accelerometers and gyros to do the same thing.
Thermopiles:
- Pros: inexpensive, easy to program
- Cons: less effective in certain weather conditions, such as snow and fog/rain
IMUs:
- Pros: can operate in any weather conditions, very accurate
- Cons: relatively expensive, hard to program
Leading autopilot examples:
Thermopile-based autopilots:
- AttoPilot ($800): Very powerful commercial autopilot, closed source
- ArduPilot ($24.95 + approximately $180 in additional parts such as GPS module and sensors): Arduino-based open source autopilot. Easy to expand and modify, but requires some soldering
- Paparazzi ($425): Powerful, but somewhat hard to use open source autopilot. Requires Linux and some programming skills.
IMU-based autopilots:
- UAV DevBoard ($149; also requires $60 GPS module): Open source autopilot development board and code, designed for flexibility and expandability, but not yet a full autopilot with waypoints and ground station. Best for flight stabilization and return-to-launch.
- Procerus autopilot ($5,000): powerful commercial autopilot, requires ground station equipment
Okay, what's next?
Follow this flowchart (sample below) to decide how to proceed!
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Comment by tycinis on March 29, 2009 at 3:55am - Great guide , can you do a FAQ for the ardupilot ?
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Comment by Chris Anderson on March 29, 2009 at 7:48am
- We have a proper manual coming for ArduPilot.
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Comment by tycinis on March 29, 2009 at 8:21am
- Thanks chris , it very helpful for people like me who start building an easy-star Uav.
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Comment by vova reznik on March 31, 2009 at 9:07am -
Thermopile-based autopilot, 335 USD + FMA sensors
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- Note: the RVOSD (the thermopile-based "autopilot" mentioned above) is just return-to-launch. It's not programmable, and not really in the class of what we consider full autopilots.
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Comment by jonny on March 31, 2009 at 12:47pm - What, no Picopilot?
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- We don't recommend Picopilot. We've had several and they're poor performers with even worse customer support.
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Comment by jonny on March 31, 2009 at 12:54pm
- Vova, very impressive OSD, is that 2.4gig?
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Comment by vova reznik on March 31, 2009 at 1:29pm
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Thanks, its 1.3GHz/300mW and KX191 camera.
To Chris,
It has waypoint navigation, but not automatic flight to waypoints. The waypoint navigation is like the home arrow, just a smaller arrow in the center of screen. The distance to waypoint is also shown.
But we can also add heading hold to this. Then you simply use the waypoint navigation to point the plane in the right direction and there is your full featured autopilot !
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- Hi Vova. Is that a single waypoint, or multiple waypoints? We usually define a full-featured autopilot as one that can allow you to program a "mission" of multiple waypoints.
© 2010 Created by Chris Anderson
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