Comment by Neil Ohnemus on February 5, 2013 at 4:29pm

"You can use this board with PX4FMU and the PX4 native autopilot stack.."

Will there be/is there a plan to support the optical flow sensor with arducopter PX4 release?

(I'm assuming here (dangerously) that PX4 Native stack is not arducopter)

Wiki Ninja Comment by Gary McCray on February 5, 2013 at 4:35pm

Great to see this available.

Are Arducopter drivers going to be working with it when the PX4 version of Arducopter is released?

By the way what ever happened to the APM optical flow hardware?

Hasn't been available from 3DR for months now.

Looks like the PX4 is going to be the way forward.

Comment by Jack Crossfire on February 5, 2013 at 5:49pm

Ever since helicommand 1st commercialized optical flow, the question has been if it can only achieve that accuracy 1.6m off the ground, what's the point of having it fly?

Comment by Ryan Alexander Bahr on February 5, 2013 at 5:50pm

I've been waiting for the optical flow sensor for quite some time. I know they said here they don't plan to introduce a low cost version but I hope that the Arducopter version isn't in that category.

Comment by Adam Conway on February 5, 2013 at 7:33pm

Clearly, I have not been paying attention because previous posters are treating this as ho-hum, but this is so cool (this is the equivalent of me freaking out, like, boy-band freaking out; for those that don't know me I am a mild mannered sort of guy).  

Comment by Jason on February 5, 2013 at 7:59pm

yeesh... it has the maxb. sonar attached.... is this removable?

Comment by Greg Fletcher on February 5, 2013 at 10:14pm

With several of these surouning the craft, maybe eight of them like a spider eye system. Sense and Avoid, the big kahuna, the holey cup.

Comment by Don Park on February 5, 2013 at 10:18pm

Can someone say more about how this sensor is being used? "provides a metric position close to the ground" is not very clear. My best guess is it replaces a sonar sensor to determine position above the ground.

Comment by Adam Conway on February 5, 2013 at 10:48pm

based on what I have read, It measures ground movement below the quad copter, which means that if you quad is moving slow enough or the camera is going fast enough you can get accurate, relative 3 axis navigation (x, y, yaw) - the sonar gives you a 4th axis (z).  If you know your start position and can measure relative position accurately then you know where you are.  I suppose it is possible to get roll and pitch within reason but I suspect that the system has been simplified to just give those 4 axes... I guess we see when the source is available.

Comment by Adam Conway on February 5, 2013 at 10:51pm

I was just thinking of this and I guess it would be completely possible to get roll from these sensors by watching the distortion of the image however and with a lot less noise than a IMU.  the challenge is that it would be difficult to sense the difference between sloped earth and roll/pitch.

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