Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on September 6, 2011 at 4:28am

I really do wonder if that crashed mystery bird shaped drone was thermaling. Its the obvious way to gain endurance in many parts of the world.

 

Nice work, I shall follow with interest.

Comment by Vladimir "Lazy" Khudyakov on September 6, 2011 at 8:34am

Amazing project!

Comment by gamma.gts on September 9, 2011 at 4:41am

Hi Jean-Louis. Your project looks very promising !

A naive question : would it be helpfull for your thermal seek program to know what is the actual land occupation underneath the glider and around, in order to prioritize areas with higher lifting potential ?

The idea I have in mind is that Open cartographic data such as OpenStreetMap could provide such information. Especially in France and various European countries where Corine Land Cover data has been integrated and may be precised.

Regards, Fabien

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on September 9, 2011 at 9:56am

Hello Fabien,

Thanks for your comments. The Thermopilot (v4) version for the APM2560 will be able to build up (in theory, today...) an automatic mapping of the thermal updrafts area, this is that I have called the self-learning phase and it will be done during the thermal search mode. I need free memory for doing a such thing, this why I have used the APM2560.

Regards, Jean-Louis

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on September 11, 2011 at 9:36am

The ThermoPilot project Phase 3 is now started...

The ArduPilot Mega 2560 with the ThermoPilot firmware v4.2 is fully installed and operational in my big ASW24 glider.

See some photos below:

Stay tuned. Regards,

Jean-Louis

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on September 13, 2011 at 3:23am

Here a video of the ThermoPilot v5 in action during a cross country soaring HIL test on the APM Planner with the APM2560. A flight plan (FPL) composed of 3 waypoints has been set in the APM2560 and the glider runs the FPL with the objective to hunt thermal upwards so as to keep the required altitude between the wp.
The firmware used here, Thermopilot v5.0 (JLN), is an updated version of the APM firmware v2.23....

Regards, Jean-Louis 

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on September 13, 2011 at 8:19am



Here a video of the ThermoPilot v5 in action during a Ridge Soaring flight (HIL test) on the APM Planner with the APM2560. Two turns points have been recorded through the transmitter by the pilot placed on the hill. Then, the glider do a full autonomous flight between these two points with the main objective: keep the altitude above these two points by exploiting the wind gradient and the dynamic upwards.

Regards, Jean-Louis

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on September 14, 2011 at 1:23am

Here a video of the ThermoPilot v5 in action during a full autonomous Thermal Hunting flight (HIL mode with the APM Planner) with an ArduPilot Mega 2560. When the pilot activate the "THERMAL Mode" with the transmitter, a 3D reference point is recorded, the glider drone begins to do a full autonomous searching of the thermal upwards in the selected zone. The area is defined by a max radius from the reference point, a ceiling and a floor altitude. The main objective of the glider drone is to fly itself in this area and hunt the Thermal upwards to gain altitude...

Regards, Jean-Louis

Comment by Mark Bateson on October 4, 2011 at 12:13pm

Very, very well done and my congratulations on your recent work and video just posted.

Sincerely, Mark

Comment by Frank on December 8, 2011 at 9:11pm

is the code open?

I started something like that and was developing when I crashed my plane, I too was using only gps altitude at 10hz and it was very good despite all the things people say about vario resolution.

I wish a code to start with, is yours available?

Comment

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next ›
• Page