Moderator Comment by Sgt Ric on April 16, 2012 at 12:40am

@Jean-Louis, impressive as always.

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on April 18, 2012 at 11:13am

Here a video of the ThermoPilot v6.4 in action during a Slope Soaring simulation in HIL mode. This is a true glider RC-model without motor. There is a 16 knots front wind on the slope, the glider is taking off from the ground in STABILIZE mode, then the ThermoPilot is set in AUTO mode to hunt the dynamics upwards from the slope.

This HIL simulation is done with X-Plane v9.70 and an APM v1.4 board.

Regards, Jean-Louis

 

Developer Comment by Marco Robustini on April 18, 2012 at 11:29am

Impressive!
JL, if you think to release hex at the end of this summer I think I'll have to wait until the summer of 2013 to try it! :P
He has no intention to release the code, but only compiled?

Bests, Marco

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on April 20, 2012 at 2:20am

Here a video of the ThermoPilot v6.4 in action during a Ridge Soaring simulation in HIL mode. This is a true glider model without motor. There is a 20 knots wind from the south blowing on the ridge. The ThermoPilot is set in AUTO mode to hunt the dynamics upwards from the ridge.

Regards,

Jean-Louis

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on April 21, 2012 at 12:57am

Hello,

I have just received a new APM v2.0 dedicated to the ThermoPilot project. I have installed the ThermoPilot v6.4 firmware and it runs very well without any problem. I am very glad to see that there is a new Pitot tube with a static input included. it is very well manufactured like a real airplane Pitot probe. Some photos below of the new APM v2 and the new Pitot probe for the airspeed measurements.

Regards, Jean-Louis

Below some photos of the NEW PITOT tube for the APM v2, this is a great value added, here...

Comment by Rob on October 8, 2012 at 3:52pm

Now I know that I am a genius.  Just yesterday I said to my kids (who are also glider pilot students) "wouldn't it be cool to use Ardupilot to automate thermal detection and soaring?"  And today, I saw your ThermaPilot project for the first time.

I will be following you closely, Jean-Louis.  So, you use vario and pitot as your only source of lift detection?  I was imagining some kind of weather feed such as Dr. Jack's thermal predictions...or even optical sensing of lift and sink (if optical detection of lift and sink only existed).

Comment by Peter Braswell on December 13, 2012 at 10:32am

Hi Jean-Louis!

I've been back to visit here quite often.  I am really, really impressed with your work.  Outstanding!

I have a few questions.  I hope you'll indulge me ...

Do you do any speed to fly calculations?  Specifically I was wondering if you do anything based on Maccready's work on speed-to-fly?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_to_fly

Do you have parameters around thermal height, thermal strength and parameters telling the glider when it should leave lift and head back out on course?

Are you familiar with the work that a graduate student form North Carolina did called the ALOFT project?  More information here.  It might provide you some additional ideas.  I found the thermal modeling and total energy calculations most interesting.  http://goosetech.homelinux.com/soaring/journal.php

Lastly, do you have or want any collaborators on this project?  I'm a R/C glider enthusiast, full-size glider pilot and professional software engineer, so I'm pretty well qualified ...  I do want to start a similar project, would be great to build on what you've done rather than rolling my own ...

Best,

Peter (Virginia USA).

Comment by Stefan on December 18, 2012 at 7:01am

Hello Jean-Louis, From the start of your project I followed it and I love it. Cannot wait for the release of this firmware so I can use it on my APM2.0 glider. Do you have any Idea when you want to release it? I cannot wait!

Comment by Andrew Groom on December 21, 2012 at 11:46am

Hi Jean Louis,

This is great work and I'm very interested to try automated thermal hunting and soaring as well. Are you able to update your Thermopilot code repository? I see it hasn't been modified since July 2011 and there doesn't seem to be anything related to thermal hunting in there. 

Comment by John Campen on December 29, 2012 at 4:55am

I'm still  not quite clear how it uses the thermals because I dont see any circular thermaling patterns IN you flight logs when it hits some thermal lift. Also have you considered using heat sensors as well as the barometer to more accurately detect thermal lift and sink? Usually the thermal temperature will be higher correct?

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