This is spring time and thus the ThermoPilot project is still under intensive development (now the v6.x version) and real tests flights can be conducted because the thermal upwards can be hunted above the fields... Below a sample log flight during a full autonomous thermal hunting in free mode.
Here a flight log during a 23 km of full autonomous cross country soaring mission in closed loops with 5 waypoints.
An ArduPilot Mega 2560 is installed on the Cularis e-Glider with the ThermoPilot v6.x firmware (an enhanced version of the ArduPlane v2.33). The ThermoPilot v6.0 includes a lot of improvements for the cross country soaring and the thermal hunting and some dedicated ML algorithms to do a close following of the thermal upwards.
Below the Cularis e-Glider and its big brother, the Fashionista: a 5 meters wingspan e-Glider (a very good thermal hunter)...
During the summer and the spring 2012, the ThermoPilot project will be very active in the air... Stay tuned...
Regards, Jean-Louis
Comments
Soaring conditions are typically very dynamic, and are changing constantly. It sounds as if you are logging a waypoint as the approximate center of the thermal, and using that to circle around. Does your algorithm have a way to "core" the thermal, and account for drift, so as to optimize rate of climb?
If only the sun didn't set, you could have a persistent aircraft!
We are not worthy, this is the beginning of a new age.
You will find some details of the features of the ThermoPilot in the previous blog at:
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/full-autonomous-slope-soaring-w...
The V6 implement more improvements to increase the accuracy of the thermal upwards finding and automatic recording of the wp in flight. The v7 will use more IA...
I use the Bosh pressure sensor from the APM v1.4 as the variometer with a double stage filtering and this is greatly sufficient due to the low speed of the glider. With the APM v2 pressure sensor it will be more sensitive but today is sufficiently good for me.
Wow!
This is really impressive:)
What are you using as an input for the variometer? only the pressure sensors?
Whats the latancy?
Hello Robert,
The main ThermoPilot algorithm is able to find the thermal upwards itself and it is also able to keep centered around them, this works very well since one year and it has been tested in various weather conditions. During a first reco flight the gps positions of the thermal upwards are recorded and then a flight plan is generated on the ground. In the next flights the glider follows the path, this is in the v6. In the next version (v7) currently in dev, the wp are created automatically in flight while the thermal hunt is running. The current version v6 is able to record a flight plan in flight but without a direct link to the thermal upwards positions. My target now is to succeed to do long distance and long duration flights with a minimum of electrical energy spent on board...
Regards, Jean-Louis
So impressive! You'e outdone yourself with this one...
Here a 15.4 km cross-country soaring mission log with the same conditions cited above, the small forest is used to gain potential energy and thus altitude during the flight...
Regards, Jean-Louis
JL, does your program store waypoints of where it finds thermals and then return to them? Or roughly speaking, how does it work?
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