Gender
Male
About
About Me:
Computer Systems Engineering student with a passion for aeronautics.
Please tell us a bit about your UAV interest
My aim is to build a complete UAV system - a self-piloting aircraft with manual control override, aerial photo and video capability, and a portable groundstation that both controls the aircraft and receives telemetry. If possible, I'd like to add in-flight mission updates and visual object tracking as well.
Activity Feed
I'm looking at the RVJET as the platform for my drone, and so far, I like the look of it. I have only one issue, which is the camera mount. From what I've seen, the tilt plate sits inside the pan ring, which means that when you're looking straight…
I'm working on a research piece testing various unusual aircraft configurations, and I've come across an issue maintaining smooth airflow over some of the components involved in a variable-geometry wing... thing. Basically, there's one section that…
"Now that is a nice feature. I wonder how hard it would be to get this running on something small enough to use as a handheld... I'm thinking Android SDK, Motorola Xoom and some custom thumbsticks..."
"You can cheat the resolution gradient by overdoing it at the photo and downscaling - ie, take the photos at, say, 300DPI equivalent, and then reduce to 280 or 250DPI for the finished image, essentially bringing the whole image down to the resolution…"
"You'll have trouble with any gravity-based gimballing systems - the problem with flight is that your resultant acceleration is often different from the local gravity direction. A notable example of this is with spiral divergence mode - for those who…"
I've decided I've messed about with the electronics enough for now and it's time for me to get an airframe and get airborne. The Skywalker seems to be the one that best meets my requirements - not too large, but with decent payload capacity (both…
"If you put another sail below to balance it then you could avoid the roll... as for moving downwind, with some cunning use of sail you could bend airflow about to steer, but your speed would decrease as you got further off the wind and you'd mostl…"
"That's the one - Bill was my lecturer in Aerospace Systems. Great guy. I've seen a version of this displayed in our lobby with a roll cage off sorts, for that rolling motion. The bonus of being able to apply a thrust in any direction... I think they…"
"Former Manchester Uni student here - the UAV is called Tumbleweed, and was part of a project being run by a lecturer of mine. The purpose of the weird rotor angles is quite cool, actually - by combining different speeds of the various rotors, it can…"
"Well, the diagram of the entire project plan is here, but I get the impression that's not entirely what you meant. I'm working on a diagram of dataflow, ie following the system through, starting by explaining what each sensor is reading, then seeing…"
A thought that occurred to me recently: is it possible to use the spare parts that a lot of RC shops sell, or maybe a semi-dismantled RC transmitter handset, to make your own transmitter? As in, build something from an…
"I wonder if it's possible to modify the fuselage so that the lovely clear cockpit bubble is on the underside, so we can put cameras behind it... I think I might have to buy a couple and attack one of them with a craft knife and glue."
"One of my lecturers worked on the Nimrod upgrade program, back in the day. The stories he tells us... what a farce. I'm not a huge fan though, but that's mostly because I think it's a crime to take an aircraft as pretty as the Comet and turn it into…"
"Yeah, something like that is kinda what I'm after. I realise it'll be quite complicated, and I definitely don't expect the ArduPilot to have the full level of complexity I described. The equations governing an aircraft's motion are complicated, and…"
"I was planning to do something like this with my UAV - the plan was to get the ArduPilot Mega and then modify the code to have full flight stability assistance, so if you guys are thinking of putting it in already then you'll be saving me a job!…"
"There's a couple of ways to go about this. The simplest is just to differentiate the latitude and longitude given by GPS, and that'll give you your x and y. GPS altitude isn't really accurate enough to give a z, so for that you need an airspeed,…"
