A 10 Km full autonomous flight of the MAJA drone with an ArduPilotMega
The MAJA drone has successfully done a 10 Km autonomous mission under flight plan on May 28, 2011. The purpose of my mission challenge is to succeed in a full 10 km autonomous navigation under a flight plan (FPL) with only the steering of the ArduPilotMega and its firmware (v2.2f JLN).
- All the 8 waypoints of the MAJA drone has been defined so as to be in line of sight of the pilot (me) who is able to override the autopilot and take the manual control in case of emergency.
- An automatic RTH (Return To Home) has been programmed in case of failsafe conditions (i.e. LOS (Loss Of Signal).
- The FPL is composed of 8 waypoints and the MAJA drone autopilot runs the FPL during 3 loops of about 3.35 KM. The full flight have been recorded with a GoPro HD wide camera.
- The MAJA drone is fully steered with an ArduPilotMega (APM v1.4) autopilot with a 9D0F IMU and the firmware v2.2f (JLN modified version based on the original APM v2.1 firmware).
The battery level, the RSSI level was monitored by the M-Link telemetry on my Royal PRO 9 (Multiplex) transmitter. After a 15 minutes flight time the Lipo (3S,11.1V 3300 mAh NanoTech) power battery level was 37%.
The weather conditions: Wind 16 Km/h from West.
The MAJA drone setup:
Avionic setup:
- ArduPilotMega APM v1.4 (Atmega 1280 @16 MHz), 32 Mips
- Full 9DOF IMU,
- Built-in 16 MB Data Logger,
- Airspeed and absolute pressure sensors (Bosh),
- triple axis magnetometer HMC5843,
- 10Hz Mediatek GPS MTK v1.6,
- Full high speed telemetry with MavLink protocol,
- Low speed telemetry with M-Link,
- High Speed Telemetry (Mavlink).
- PC Laptop ground station (APM planner),
- Hand-held groundstation (Ardustation),
Firmware: APM v2.2f (modified version by JLN)
Camera: GoPro HD Wide
- Brushless motor: Spitz 30 (BMI) 360 Watts (Max 480W),
- propeller thin APC-E 12x6,
- ESC: BMI #85505 C-45 (45-55A),
- 4 servos Corona CS-929 MG (1.8 kg.cm, 12.5g),
- Propulsion battery: Lipo 3S Turnigy Nanotech 3300mAh 11.1V,
- Avionic battery: Lipo 3S Turnigy Nanotech 2200 mAh 11.1V,
- UBec 5A, 5V for the Avionics (ArduPilotMega + Receiver),
- Receiver: Multiplex RX9 DR with M-Link telemetry.
I am very grateful to the ArduPilot dev team and to all the contributors of the APM project:
Doug Weibel, Jose Julio, Jordi Munoz, Jason Short, Chris Anderson, HappyKillMore, Bill Premerlani, James Cohen, JB from rotorFX, Automatik, Fefenin, Peter Meister, Remzibi...
More infos at: http://diydrones.com/profile/JeanLouisNaudin
Comments
Hi Jean Louis
When you fly with your servo tuning as described above,
do you use dual rates at all or are those the full surface movements you fly with?
I would like the Xplane model too! if you want
Hi Jean;
What a fastastic set up!! Would your X-Plane Maja model be avilable to us? My Maja will be arriving soon and i will have the Go Pro camera set up as well as the long range sytem. but your Xplane model is a good thing if you allow us to use it too.
Regards .. Reza
Here a video of a full autonomous take off and landing mission under flight plan with the ArduPilot Mega 2560 connected in HIL mode (Hardware In the Loop) on the simulator X-Plane v9.70. The firmware loaded on the ArduPilot Mega board is the ThermoPilot v5.0d by Jean-louis Naudin, this is an improved version of the original APM v2.23. The MAJA model that I have designed for X-Plane is the full scale replication of my MAJA drone tested in flight with the same hardware and PID setup...
The autonomous take off and landing procedure haven't yet been tested during real flights because my MAJA flying model haven't yet a langing gear.
During the take off, the runway axis is locked by the autopilot. The landing pattern is defined by 3 points, the LCP (Landing Contact Point), the REP (RunWay Entry Point) and the AEP (Approach Entry Point). A virtual glide slope is set (i.e. 15%) for a 80 m take off. The LCP and the REP are set and memorized automatically by the firmware during the rolling take off, the AEP is set with the flight planner as the LAND point.
Regards, Jean-Louis
My MAJA drone has done successful tests flights last WE (on sept 25, 2011), with the ASW-24 Thermal Hunter Drone (ThermoPilot project).
You will find the full the working firmware of my MAJA: HERE
Regards Jean-Louis
Here a video of the MAJA drone on Xplane v9.2 tested in HIL (Hardware In the Loop) mode with the ArduMega 2560 board with the firmware ThermoPilot v5.0a (JLN) and the APM Planner.
I have used here the same PID setup than for the true MAJA drone tested in flight. The HIL flight with Xplane v9.2 is really equal to the true flight with the same hardware setup.
Regards, Jean-Louis
Thank you
Hello Chuck,
Here the PIDs setting for the MAJA:
Regards,
Jean-Louis
Congrats on the long flight.
I just received a Maja and I'm about to start the build.
Can you share the PIDs you're using?
Think this is useful
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