It's time for the third round of the third round of the second season of the Trust Time Trial (T3) competion! Now that the weather is improving, there are no excuses for not participating. Valuable prizes await!
This the Reliability Round. Our Judge, Gary Mortimer, describes the rules below:
-------------------------------------- RULES ------------------------
Point of order first: All T3 entries should be flown away from built up areas. Should you have any fly aways or incidents its best to have them miles from anyone else.
The aim of this round is to show reliability.
A very simple task: autonomously fly to a point that you have chosen that is at least 300 metres from your takeoff point (100m for copters). At an altitude of 75 meters (25m for copters) autonomously take a single photo of your point, then return to launch, land (manually or autonomously) and do it all again. Repeat this for a total of five flights.
Your entry should show your take off and landing times for each flight as well as KMLs showing the slight path. As always, post your entries in the comments below.
Each individual image will be compared and the person with the most shots with the chosen point in the centre of the image wins.
Honesty is everything here, don't discover that by chance a point you didn't select is in the centre of each shot and then tell us that's what you were after all along.
But.....
If you can make something interesting with your shots extra points will be forthcoming
You might make a map using MapKnitter. Have a look around here to find out what its all about here. Do something with Photosynth, ICE or any of the other similar mapping products springing up. Wouldn't it be nice to have a DIYD generated layer of opensource map images out there!
So in summary one day, five flights, five photos. Extra points for creative use of mapping software/services.
What you do with any other images is up to you. Impress us.
Why the pub challenges in the image above? Well I was looking at a dart board when I thought of it.
As an aside the area in the picture will be underwater next year, a dam wall is being built on the right. The big circles are irrigation centre pivots just the sort of thing a farmer might be interested at looking at from a UAS
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There will be three winners in each category (planes and copters), with the #1s getting a $100 gift certificate at the DIY Drones store and #2 and #3 getting $25 each.
All entrants who successfully compete the course with a copter, regardless of place in the judging, will receive a flying robot merit badge!
Deadline is Sunday, May 13th, at midnight PST.
Comments
Totally agree Gary, the Twinstar is still my favourite for autopilot stuff :)
I'm surprised to see no entries, especially given the number of questions regarding the rules. It was certainly a good challenge.
Hopefully I'll get some free time soon and be able to try it out for myself anyway.
Is everyone waiting until the 11th hour or has this round been a royal fail??
@Colin you have to love the Twinstar!
Unfortunately I haven't had time to get to the field for this round, which is a shame, because I think this is a really valuable test.
I did, however, manage to complete the first part of the round- build a camera mount for my twinstar :P Here's some pics, perhaps they will be useful to someone
Quite a straight forward design, using double sided tape with zip ties for strength. Hopefully it will work alright, there isn't too much fuselage in the picture. About 5gr on the wing tip puts the CG back in the right place.
Good luck to everyone putting in an entry. Looking forward to the photos :)
Hey Ricardo, you can check Simple Camera control or Advanced Camera Tracking. For a 'copter you can check out this.
sorry for asking this question here, but can someone point me a tutorial of how triggering the camera through the mission planner, on APM2? i already noticed about camera gimbal (roll/tilt) and shutter channels on the APM2, but haven´t found anything about this until now.
by the way, my first (and 2nd-8th) autonomous flights were made this weekend. i believe i´ll use a GoPro2 on automatic mode, as i only have some time for testing this tomorrow, and i´ll probably won´t have enought time to do anything else.
@Chris I was thinking that the five shots people had would end up be slightly different and from that a 3D model or whatever could be made. Mosaics are turning a little yesterday ;-) (expecting flames)
This is underlining that very few people are using their platforms for work ;-)
This Flying Circus ought to do well. They no doubt could offer some insights.
As the people seem to want it, I will accept images taken in any way now. But the top marks will still go to those that take single shots fired at their given point.
Five take offs and landings are non negotiable.
Entries that take time to explain how they achieved their results and the work flows and software required will score highly as well.
This is about increasing the knowledge here and having fun.
What about loiter over the target, and shoot a 10fps burst of the target and choose the best? It's sort of cheating I guess, but it's also an effective strategy and only a $250 camera. And I know the 10fps burst works as I've used it to good effect already.
As far as camera "knocks", I wonder if the "tough" cameras would work well for this. I have an Olympus Stylus Tough 6000. It lives up to the name.
Mark: Gary, the judge, has spoken (in comments): "I was expecting people to take a single shot". No continuous mode shooting, no mosaics.
I totally agree with Mark. I thought the whole purpose was to work out the point of "click the camera" by means thought out by yourself or stolen from someone else, then compare to say, google earth, and work out how close or far you were away from the target. Take your best 5 and submit those. Doing image burst is not accepted as a single image. You could do the same with a vid camera and mozaic the best 10 subs but that wouldn't be in the rules either. I also assume we would have to supply some paticulars about how and what we used?
I'm a bit confused.
Does putting the camera into "one shot per second" mode qualify for this trial? Or does it need to be "take one shot when over waypoint"?
I had thought it was the latter, but am confused regarding the stitching comments, which seem to imply periodic shots.
Many TIA for the clarification!
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