Hi, everyone, this is the fifth part of our autopilot precision series in which we test the different drones and autopilots by flying them on a photogrammetry route created in UgCS.
So far we have published the results for DJI Phantom 4, DJI Naza-M V2, Mikrokopter Quad XL and DJI A2. This week we finally put the PX4 autopilot through the test. For this we used a 3DR IRIS with PX4 firmware and flew it on our photogrammetry route using straight trajectory.
Here are the results:
Download the KML files and take a look at them yourself in Google Earth
Get the newest version of UgCS here:
https://www.ugcs.com/en/page/download
Safe flights,
UgCS Team
Comments
I can predict what will happen, if they run Ardupilot with a very simple un-optimized mission. It will cut the corners very badly. They need to put a 1 second pause at each waypoint.
Flying with the ubiquitous u-blox M8 GPS does make more sense, very few fly with the older 7 series single GNSS only these days.
By itself, not really relevant. There are many many factors which go into this.
How much of this is effected by the GPS used? The Phantom 4's dual band GPS can get close to 30 satellite locks at times which should increase it's precision considerably over a pixhawk with a UBLOX 7 series which struggles to get more than 12 sats.
This is actually a pretty good result for PX4, I have to say, I'm surprised.
We should discuss the settings to be used on Ardupilot for best results.
Set it to have a 1 second stop at every waypoint, and it should have virtually no error/overshoot at all.
Yes, we plan on testing ArduCopter (on Pixhawk) as well!
Really nice analysis. I agree with Marc, it would be quite interesting to compare it against Arducopter! Any chance you could do that at some point?
Interesting -- maybe not surprising. So will you be trying the other flavor of firmware on the Pixhawk? Arducopter? I would expect similar if not better results.