3D Robotics

AVC Final Scores!


Congratulations to Antonio Lyska, the UAV winner of the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition! In his final run, he did a 26 second lap and then nailed an autonomous landing in the box for a 30 second deduction, for a final score of negative 4 seconds. Even more impressive, this was totally DIY--he's been working on his Rabbit-powered IMU-based board for five years, and coded everything from scratch, including a beautiful custom ground station. He's so confident in his setup that he doesn't even watch his plane in flight--he just watches the action on his ground station. That's him above, with his flying wing crossing the start line for the victorious run. So calm!


In second place, with a time of 3 seconds (18 second run, minus 15 seconds for attempting an autonomous landing) was Doug Weibel, with ArduPilot IMU (version 2.6 code) on his SkyFun. His plane did a gorgeous run, with sharp turns and rock-solid stabilization and the fastest time of any UAV, but it got a bit lost coming in for the autonomous landing and ended up crash-landing in a nearby parking lot. But autonomous landing was attempted, and the plane gave up some foam to get those 15 points!


In third place was the University of Arizona Paparazzi team, which impressed everyone with their autonomous landings. The last one just missed the box, but otherwise it was very solid all day. Their best score was 5 seconds, after deductions.


Jordi and DIY Drones came in fourth place with 37 seconds (no deductions attemped) with our ArduPilot (2.5.4 thermopile code) and EasyStar.


The UAVDevBoard teams impressed everyone with their awesome vertical starts, acrobatic maneuvers and stunning stability. Unfortunately all that sky candy came at the cost of clipping corners (in the case of Ben Levitt's Acromaster), so he didn't get a course completion score.


Adam Barrow managed to go to a local hobby shop and get replacement parts to reubuild his T28, which was flying perfectly with the UAVDevBoard. But in the final practice flight he lost control in manual mode and piled it in again, so he wasn't able to compete in the final rounds. But based on the glimpse of autonomous performance, that plane and autopilot are going to be a serious contender next year.


For next year, we're thinking acrobatic plane and quad copters are going to win the day, given the scoring system. Can't wait!

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Comments

  • Admin
    :))) , thank you Chris , now we/I can put a face to the mystery Billu Bhaiya ( Big/elder Brother Bill ) & Pete ( I should call him Pete Bhaiya too)
  • 3D Robotics
    Here's a picture of Billu (Bill Premerlani, on left, with Pete Holland)

  • Admin
    True but then nothing stopped us winning it either, add to it the fact that he was one guy who built it from scratch , this forum is bunch of very smart guys from all over the world, I don't see the fair equation for comparison or diluting his achievement , I bet if he was invited for our T3 contests he would fair well among toppers here too IMHO
  • A lot easier to make something specifically to win a contest & focus on it than to adapt a general purpose autopilot, keep up on all the community needs, promotion.
  • Admin
    I hope you have picture of it that you will post soon , we can always use good ideas ;-),
    Incredible it is , & won too in style :))
  • 3D Robotics
    Yes, he had a lovely little board, with a small Rabbit dev board on top of his custom IMU board and a custom uBlox GPS board. Not much bigger than ArduPilot Mega, and the wiring and connectors were the neatest I've ever seen. Incredible that he did it all himself.
  • Admin
    Did you get chance to peek into his airframe Chris? all I could see is two pitot tubes stick out in nose , No GPS are visible :(
    Yep he looks like Shy guy but Podcast he must ... ;-)
  • 3D Robotics
    Needless to say, you'll be hearing more about Antonio and his autopilot here. We hung around with him at lot at AVC and he's a supernice guy. Says he's too shy for a podcast, so we'll ease him in gently ;-)
  • Moderator
    Well done Doug
  • Clever attempt to do that, never thought of something like that.

    Would it be possible to have the normal "fly waypoints" on one point of the TX-Switch and have "landing waypoints" on the second position of the switch?

    Sounds like a very clever attempt, keep up working around on it, i can't wait to get my ArduMEGA...

    Daniel
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