Great feature coming up soon in Ardupilot's Copter 3.5. And congrats to the contribution of the month winner!
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Congratulations to Peter Barker for winning the "Best Contribution of the Month" for Dec 2016 for his Package Place Feature (video here).
This new mission command (which will be released with AC3.5) allows a vehicle to deliver a package autonomously without the vehicle actually touching down. It accomplishes this by carefully monitoring the motor level until it detects the package touching down. It then opens the gripper to release the cargo. This is very handy especially for delivering packages on surfaces (i.e. mountain sides or the sea!) where the vehicle cannot safely land. Read more, including videos, here ...
Comments
Ah ok, so you mean we can have a servo winch type of delivery system ? So I understand, according to what Randy explained, that when the throttle level is reduced by the autopilot, that would mean the package has touched ground, and then a servo release command is triggered to "free" the package ?
Hughes, fantastic work and video.
The difference with this new functionality is that the package is not dropped and delivery is not primarily based on altitude for package release. The flight controller senses when the package has touched down (motor levels) instead, to then activate the release.
You might see it better in the second video in Randy's post.
Current Arducopter release has and had already all the required mission commands to do this. Did it in V3.2.1 more than a year ago to drop a package in a delivery mission:
what new command(s) will be introduced in 3.5 are you referring to?