Iris Resiliency

Power redundancy to the autopilot isnt going to help keep the Iris in the air if the battery fails as there would be nothing left to power the motors. It would not be terribly difficult to use a second small battery (500mah maybe) that could kick in if there was a main pack failure to allow an immediate landing. Similar systems are already widely used in large RC planes and jets. They would only have to beefed up slightly to handle the higher current of a quad vs servos. Also current systems drain two packs at an even rate so it would have to be redesigned to switch to another battery based on a main pack voltage threshold. It could then send a signal to the autopilot that there is a battery failure and trigger an immediate landing. Personally I haven't experienced, or witnessed, any battery failures in the many years I've been flying that would benefit from something like this. Having telemetry of the pack voltage has sufficed so far.

With the exception of scripts run from mission planner (and standard missions are uploaded, not run as scripts from Mission Planner) a blue screen at the GCS isn't going to affect the flight. Put more simply, "auto" missions are run entirely on the aircraft. Loss of the GCS need not affect the mission.

Some work on recovery/emergency landing of a quad has been done, I believe by ETH Zurich. AFAIK, no such capability presently exists outside of that research team, and AFAIK, none (yet) exists for IRIS. That being said, look into from where the Pichawk design originates.

Power resiliancy/redundancy features have been introduced with the pixhawk, but it is an area of ongoing development and discussion. If you want to know more, read the Dev lists. The capacity exists in the hardware, but I think it's not yet a touted or functional feature. Expect more great things from the developers, or get involved and help create great things. The foundation is there already.

Just my two cents, you'll have better input from more authoritative voices here.

Replies

Charles K Taylor February 26, 2014 at 7:16pm

Power redundancy to the autopilot isnt going to help keep the Iris in the air if the battery fails as there would be nothing left to power the motors. It would not be terribly difficult to use a second small battery (500mah maybe) that could kick in if there was a main pack failure to allow an immediate landing. Similar systems are already widely used in large RC planes and jets. They would only have to beefed up slightly to handle the higher current of a quad vs servos. Also current systems drain two packs at an even rate so it would have to be redesigned to switch to another battery based on a main pack voltage threshold. It could then send a signal to the autopilot that there is a battery failure and trigger an immediate landing. Personally I haven't experienced, or witnessed, any battery failures in the many years I've been flying that would benefit from something like this. Having telemetry of the pack voltage has sufficed so far.
Moderator

Michael Pursifull January 9, 2014 at 9:23pm

With the exception of scripts run from mission planner (and standard missions are uploaded, not run as scripts from Mission Planner) a blue screen at the GCS isn't going to affect the flight. Put more simply, "auto" missions are run entirely on the aircraft. Loss of the GCS need not affect the mission.

Some work on recovery/emergency landing of a quad has been done, I believe by ETH Zurich. AFAIK, no such capability presently exists outside of that research team, and AFAIK, none (yet) exists for IRIS. That being said, look into from where the Pichawk design originates.

Power resiliancy/redundancy features have been introduced with the pixhawk, but it is an area of ongoing development and discussion. If you want to know more, read the Dev lists. The capacity exists in the hardware, but I think it's not yet a touted or functional feature. Expect more great things from the developers, or get involved and help create great things. The foundation is there already.

Just my two cents, you'll have better input from more authoritative voices here.

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