This is the second post I have made that is an update to my initial project design to make my fully autonomous aircraft. Our team has made a fair amount of decision making sense my previous post. Just for reference, the official name of our project is now "FlySpy".Airplane Selection:We have chosen the Easy Glider Pro from multiplex. Although it does not have as much internal space as the Easy Star, we fell that ailerons were a must for our application which Easy Star doesn't have. We have completely assembled the airplane and have flown it once. (No one on our team has experience flying RC Airplanes so we have an official pilot from a local UAV Imaging company. It would be nice for someone on our team to have experience flying but we do not want to use our project as a test dummy.) We are using the Power Pack and Servo pack that are made for the Easy Glider Pro. The motor seems beefy enough to support a flight with our components added to its weight so we do not intend on buying a bigger one.Battery : EVOLITE Li-Po 7.4V 2500mAh BatteryAutopilot Module Component Selection:Microcontroller - Microchip PIC24FJ256GA1103 Axis Accelerometer - Analog Devices ADCL3302 Axis Gyro - InvenSense IDG 300Barometer - VTI Technologies SCP 1000Range Finder - LV-MaxSonar-EZ1 Sonar Range FinderGPS Module - uBlox LEA-4P and getting Sarantel SL 1201 (Geohelix P2)SD Card Slot - TBDI have obtained a Niko Cool Pix s7c from a friend to use as an onboard camera. I am still working on decoding its push button pins so our Micro can turn it on/off and control the shutter.Topics we are contemplating:Powering Autopilot Devices - Everything that we are using runs off a 3.3V Vdd. We are uncertain if it would be okay to use the power rail coming out of the speed controller and sending it to a voltage regulator. We estimate our devices drawing about 157mA when everything is operating. Is this the usual solution or do we need to run off of two battery sources?Gyro & Accelerometer Data - I am still in the process of researching what are the best algorithms to fuse the data between the gyro and accelerometer to get a good orientation reading.If you are interested in looking at our progress, you can always look at our team website. Or if you want to go more in detail about my day to day discovery, you can look at my notebook.
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Hello all,This is my debut to the site and I will try to continue to post throughout the development of my project. I am a senior in Computer Engineering and for my senior design I have chosen to make a fully autonomous aircraft. I have no experience in flying rc airplanes but I just have extreme interest in airplanes. I have three other team mates (1 computer engineer, and 2 electrical engineers). For the last month, I have been researching rc aircrafts and devices that I will need to use to make my autonomous flight successful.My intent is for the airplane to take off, navigate to gps coordinates, either record video for a specific duration of time or take pictures, then return and land.Another team tried making one of these in the spring of 2008 but not with such high goals. They completed building but were not successful because interference from the microcontroller was preventing the transmitter from having full control.Based off my initial research, these are some things I will have to use:• Spread Spectrum Transmitter/Receiver to eliminate the microcontroller from interfering with manual control• GPS receiver to specify current position and altitude (heard mixed things about gps’s altitude measurement)• A two axis tilt sensor (Looking for one that does 360 degrees)• A SD card to store and retrieve all information on flight and camera output.I have been debating my choice in rc airplane. I heard multiplex has good material for crashing and easy repair. I would really like to use either the predator or a jet design but I have a hard time figuring out how much thrust and extra space models have. As far as thrust goes, I wanted to use ducted fans but I have no idea if this is a “no-no”. I say this because I haven’t seen any other experiments with them. From what I have read, they are better at high speeds but cause a lot of drag at low speeds. The team from last year used a Multiplex Easy Glider Electric. Any suggestions!???A few ideas that I was playing with:• I would like to sensor the battery life with the microcontroller to see if each flight is can be done• Even further if I can somehow make a base where it the plane easily taxi to and charge its battery without human intervention• Retractable landing gear (probably would have to buy the plane like this)• Send information wirelessly when in reach (either though Wi-Fi or Bluetooth• Object avoidance using RF signalsAs you can see, I have ran away with the idea of this project. I am open to all opinions, questions, comments, and random rants. I really need people to challenge my ideas. Thanks and FIRE AWAY!View my next project update HERE.
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