Hello all
I am working on a tailsitter design. I realise that the ardupilot software cannot yet handle the transition from hover to horizontal flight, but I'll face that obstacle when I come to it. For now, I am working on the hardware, and am wondering whether anyone has any suggestions as to how to orient the APM given that the top of the UAV in hover mode becomes the nose of the fuselage in horizontal flight - to further complicate the matter, the design uses a symmetrical, variable-incidence airfoil so there is no "right way up" during horizontal flight.
I am considering having a thin, transparent plastic nose cone housing an FPV camera and external GPS - in this case, if I mount the APM longitudinally in the fuselage, will the APM's sensors work in both hover and horizontal flight? Assuming the necessary software modifications are made.
Cheers!
Replies
Hi,
With the necessary software modifications, you can orient APM any way you want to. The gyros, acc. meters and compass all work equally well in any orientation in space. The GPS antenna might benefit from being held horizontal though....
I am working with another thing where I will need to write my own software; a tilt-wing plane with a horizontal variable pitch prop at the tail, so it is either a tricopter, an airplane or something in between. I am so fortunate the my plane will always have its fuselage more or less horizontal...
ArduPlane supports inverted flight with non inverted control, so I would suggest you mount the board as in an airplane (longitudinally).
PS will you use control surfaces or multiple motors for hovering? I once experimented with a Vane-O-Copter, a single big prop with 4 rudders beneath it. It just spun around like crazy on the floor in ground effects, until it was 1 or 2 feet up and the controls started to work :)
Regards
Soren