Hi,
Open source autopilots are widely used in the RC toys. I tried 3DR's pixhawk. It seems to be quite okay. There are also other open source autopilots.
The commercial autopilots are always used in commercial unmanned aircraft. They are somehow much more expensive than open source. I’m wondering what are commercial autopilots’ typical advantages compared with the best open source autopilots for conventional fixed wing usage. Could anyone give any hint on that?
Best,
Anna
Replies
MTBF is Mean time between failure. That is a true statistical measurement. MTTF is Mean time till failure or it can also mean Mean time to repair. All are terms used in the services business which I'm infinitely familiar with.
Measuring MTBF in a AP is similar as doing the same on a airplane or jet engine. Its not a car or lawnmower that can just pull over or stop running. It has catastrophic meaning in most cases in aircraft.
Whether it fails in the first 5 seconds, minutes, hours or days is also irrelevant. Failure is failure as long as you can not predict it. If it is engineered to not fail for at least 1000+ hours or so (as is the case in most aircraft components/parts) before some level of overhaul or refurbishment occurs, then this is acceptable practice.
My points were that there are huge and significant differences currently in Hobby Grade AP and the Pro level. I personally want to get involved with an improvement and upgraded level of the Hobby Grade AP approaching professional grade by eliminating the hardware side of the shortfall in the equation. This should be doable and not cost a fortune to do so. In so doing (I would think) it would also bolster the position of these AP's (and the Mfg companies) status and public opinion that they are not merely high tech toys. Then again some may want to keep that separation between the classes.
Food for thought...
Have you published any paper or book on this statics? If you research in this area, you may have read or known some references on the comparison between Hobby Grade AP and industrial grade AP. I'd like to read them as well. Could you let me know the names of these references or where could I download them?
Shall we say the major difference is the reliability of the hardware and the flight control algorithm is almost at the same level?
Btw, could you please let me know if there's any paper on this comparison? I'd like to read them.
I think that's probably accurate. I have seen some graduate theses on these comparisons, but I'm not sure they're published.
What are those thesis typical conclusions?
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