Hi All,
I've been looking at various commercially available Quad platforms for a while now and trying to decide which one to go for. According to my requirements, I've narrowed things down to
1.) Arducopter - about 1000$ for RTF kit
2.) AscTec Auto pilot - About 4000$ for RTF kit
By looking at the functionality and hardware, I don't see a big difference in the two options, but the cost difference makes me wonder.. I might be wrong. Appreciate if anyone can provide a quick list of differences between the two platforms, that can explain the cost diff..
cheers
Dinuka
Replies
The AscTec Hummingbird Autopilot is the top of the line quadrotor currently available on the market. They are used at all the research labs doing cutting edge quadrotor stuff (ETH Zurich, UPenn, ...).
Comparison between that and Arducopter is hard, but let's be objective:
- Airframe: AscTec has beautiful carbon/balsa composite arms and I think aluminum mainframe, nicely machined. Arducopter is made to be modular and simply built by hobby enthusiasts.
- Boards: AscTec Hummingbird Autopilot has a dual-processor setup with crazy computing power. One chip runs standard stabilization/flight control software, the other chip can be programmed with your own code. Switching between the two can be done in flight. Arducopter uses standard Ardupilot Mega board which is not as powerful.
- Software/Hardware speed: AscTec software/hardware outputs motor commands at 1000Hz. That means their main control loop runs at that speed and they use special I2C ESCs that can actually support that kind of speed. This together with a well-tuned control loop makes for their perfect stability. Arducopter control loop runs at 200Hz and uses standard PPM ESCs that can't support frequencies much higher than 400Hz.
So in summary: AscTec is just in another league. It is supposed to be a high-end research tool. Arducopter is a hobby tool and a great starting platform for people wanting to get into all the quadrotor details, and it has lots of potential for future growth. For example, you could take normal Arducopter and 'pimp' it by using more powerful processor board (like Multipilot32) to get to speeds maybe similar to AscTec. Will it ever be as good as AscTec? Who knows, I hope to find out in the near future!!!! ;-)
Hi Dinuka,
I have both (arducopter with original airframe and ASCTEC Pelican) and there is no way you can compare them...
Pelican es more stable, loiter is perfect, even with wind (5-8 m/s).
In the pelican you have one spare CPU, so you can use it to control the other one (the one that really control the copter) or for other purposes.
Stability is perfect; I think this is due to the high computational power of the autopilot. No much more to say, as I have not tested it completly.
To be honest, compare both copters is like comparing day and night....
((I don't have any business relation with them, by the way)
Regards,