3D Robotics

ArduPilot isn't just for planes--it's a great board for robot cars, too. At least three of the rovers in the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition used our board for their vehicles, where it was just acting as a 2D autopilot. Nathan Siedle, the CEO of Sparkfun, used a modified ArduPilot board for his rover and others used the board stock. Like almost all the rovers, regardless of what board they used, they went awry at one corner or another, due to waypoint, software or sensor errors or just wild out of controlness (see above). The one rover that finished the course used a custom Atmega32 board. Next year I'd expect more rovers to finish the course, just like DARPA road race. I also expect more of them to use ArduPilot: it's the easiest way to add RC and GPS to Arduino. You just need to program them right! (photo from Makezine)
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  • @hiflyer: more than PID gains would need to be adjusted for that, but mostly it depends on your rovers physical and sensor setup. In a rover you would normally use proximity sensing to avoid obstacles for example - this is not present in the ardupilot code. But you can add it and use the analog and digital IO ports on the ArduPilot for any kind of sensor (almost) you have.
  • If using Ardupilot (stock) in a rover, what modifications need to made to the code? I know to reduce the PID gains.
  • Moderator
    Or washing machines
  • Next month we'll discover how millions of Ardupilots are used in passenger jets.
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