ArduCopter 3.2, which is now in beta testing, has an awesome new spline navigation feature, which creates smooth curves between waypoints (thanks to David Dewey, with help from Leonard Hall and Randy Mackay). One advantage of this is that you get really smooth camera angles, as the copter gracefully turns and points itself at the designated Region of Interest.
Check out this video, which shows it to great effect.
ArduCopter 3.2 will be released to all users in late June, after Sparkfun AVC (the final stress test!)
Comments
@John, although the Spline mission command might be available in the mission planner, it won't work unless you're also running AC3.2-rc2 on the copter.
@Paul, if no gimbal is set-up or it's a 2-axis gimbal with no yaw control then it will yaw the copter to point at the object. If it's a 3-axis gimbal then it will leave the vehicle pointing forward and just turn the camera. It will never modify the pitch of the vehicle in order to point the camera though. It wouldn't be possible to do that and also fly the spline correctly I think.
June 4-5 were exceptionally calm days in Tampa. How close can you get to the tower with no chance of getting blown into it?
I love showing videos with spline and ROI to my friends that fly DJI Phantoms.
Nice work Devs!
Yes, coming to Mission Planner, too.
Well done guys! Will the Spline feature be available in mission planner?
@Edgar
Did you use ROI for automatic gimbal pointing?
when is it coming???
Spline support will be in the next release of APM Planner 2.0. It really is an awesome feature.
We should also mention that the above video was created by Edgar Scott who has been helping us test this latest version over on the AC3.2 beta testing thread.
You can see the first ArduCopter spline video from David Dewey below. I find the videos it produces quite mesmerizing.