We won't be able to begin the (long) process of uploading the photos and imagery of CanberraUAV until we get back home, but I've uploaded a few of the "best of" photos taken from our UAV inflight:
(Flying over Joe)
(Passing over the Range Official's tent)
More images can be found on the CanberraUAV Flickr Group.
Comments
Yes, I definitely like the idea of breaking it out into the relevant sections. Jani covered the fundamentals...I know it's a lot of work to consolidate and share what you can. We're waiting patiently. =) Let us know if there's anything we can do to help bring it together.
Stephen as you know, naturally we all like technical details. So there could be several posts describing different technical aspects of whole project. They could be split for example as: ground station, airframes, flight system, image processing, telemetries and so on. Depending on how deep each section will go. Also there could be details of challenges and failures and naturally story of how mission went in overall etc.
Having a single report for the mission would probably be too big and unwieldy, so Tridge and myself will write up several smaller reports on the more interesting aspects of the mission. I'll be writing up articles of the terrain following algorithm and the "unintentional bottle drop".
What other aspects of the mission is the DIYDrones community interested in?
Interesting! Thanks for the info Tridge. So the cord was from a parachute attached to the bottle and got fouled when it was released? Then the aircraft made it back to the runway? Seems like some manual control would be required! I'd certainly trade some landing points for the UAV actually *landing* and not *cratering* in that situation. Looking forward to a full report!
Hi Bim and John,
We used a PtGrey Chameleon camera. All the image recognition was automatic in the plane, using a custom set of python and C code running on a pandaboard.
I've posted links to all of the source code and our telemetry logs on the competition forum
The competition rules give extra points for auto takeoff, auto recognition and auto landing. We got full 10/10 for auto takeoff, 20/20 for auto search and 5/10 for the landing. We lost points on landing as our safety pilot (Jack Pittar) took over for the last few seconds of the landing. The parachute cord wrapped around the prop lowered the power from the engine sufficiently that the plane was struggling to land well, so Jack thought it was safer to take over at the last moment (that was definitely the right decision)
About the IR beacon, our camera did spot it, although mostly via the reflected sunlight from the lens. Our search strategy was based on the distinctive colours of Joes clothing, not on the lamp.
Cheers, Tridge
Dang...did the cord from the bottle drop mech. get hung in the prop?
Stephen...it's been a couple of years since I read the rules of the OBC, but it's intended to be fully autonomous from launch to land, yes?
I know Joe previously had a small IR beacon, can you give us a clue as to what imaging technology allowed the drone to find Joe?
This article didn't quite cover it to my satisfaction....thanks!
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/drone-finds-dummy-...
Cool photos!
What camera did you use to find Joe? The image processing was done on the UAV or on the ground station?
And again, congratulations :)