If you haven't had a chance to read the documentation for Bill Premerlani 6 DOF UAV development board, you should. It is 35 pages of the best education you'll get on IMU-based autopilots, including theory, code and usage instructions. All written in clear, easy to understand plain English. Bill's done a terrific job on this one, and I hope more people will start to use his board, which I think is the best open source IMU-based autopilot development platform on the market.
I am not too concerned about the relatively low activity that I am seeing relative to UAV DevBoard, I think its simply that your board is a huge success, and everyone is flocking to it. So eventually I will port all the firmware that I have developed to your platform. For now its simply more convenient for me to use my own board. It is selling better than I expected, so far there have been 21 units sold, thanks mainly to the visibility afforded by your website.
I am currently working with Paul Bizard on "direction cosine matrix" IMU firmware. We are making excellent progress, and what we have working right now is performing beyond my wildest expectations. It provides fast (every 20 milliseconds) and accurate (approximately 1 degree) estimates of the 9 direction cosines that relate the orientation of the three plane axis to the three earth axis. I should have it finished in a few weeks, and will publish it here as documented open source firmware, along with the theory. Paul Bizard is presently running simulations, we'll publish those as they become available.
After that, I plan to revise the "GentleNav" firmware to take full advantage of the direction cosine matrix, and will publish that when it becomes available. I should have it done in time for spring. It should completely solve the mixing problem, enabling sharp turns without any change in pitch angle.
Beyond that, I can see how to extend the IMU firmware to provide accurate, 20 millisecond updates for position and velocity as well as orientation. It should enable some very aggressive aerobatics. I will keep everyone posted.
Comments
Thank you very much for the kind words.
I am not too concerned about the relatively low activity that I am seeing relative to UAV DevBoard, I think its simply that your board is a huge success, and everyone is flocking to it. So eventually I will port all the firmware that I have developed to your platform. For now its simply more convenient for me to use my own board. It is selling better than I expected, so far there have been 21 units sold, thanks mainly to the visibility afforded by your website.
I am currently working with Paul Bizard on "direction cosine matrix" IMU firmware. We are making excellent progress, and what we have working right now is performing beyond my wildest expectations. It provides fast (every 20 milliseconds) and accurate (approximately 1 degree) estimates of the 9 direction cosines that relate the orientation of the three plane axis to the three earth axis. I should have it finished in a few weeks, and will publish it here as documented open source firmware, along with the theory. Paul Bizard is presently running simulations, we'll publish those as they become available.
After that, I plan to revise the "GentleNav" firmware to take full advantage of the direction cosine matrix, and will publish that when it becomes available. I should have it done in time for spring. It should completely solve the mixing problem, enabling sharp turns without any change in pitch angle.
Beyond that, I can see how to extend the IMU firmware to provide accurate, 20 millisecond updates for position and velocity as well as orientation. It should enable some very aggressive aerobatics. I will keep everyone posted.
best regards,
Bill Premerlani