Developer





During the alpha testing phase with the "APM Copter V3" code
i immediately reported to the Dev Team that the Loiter mode was very accurate but is not allowed to fly normally, like with other system as DJI and Mikrokopter, Zero-UAV, etc.
We preferred to make the Loiter mode that would serve to accurately reposition the multirotor, and to help beginners to fly slowly and safely.
An italian friend and developer, Sandro Tognana, collected my challenge and started to develop a flight mode as I wanted, in line with the other famous flight control board.
Another awesome programmer, Julien Dubois, has joined our team and has worked actively to implement the complicated wind compensation.
After several months of development and testing are pleased to present the "Hybrid flight mode", in two words a "flyable Loiter" with wind compensation, the code virtually switches from "Loiter" to "Alt-Hold" and viceversa when you exit and enter a sticks deadband (configurable), considering of course the compensation of the wind, therefore complies with the tuning of your multirotor.
You can configure some parameters but already with the default works perfectly, my video speaks for itself.

This new mode is currently being debugged (in alpha phase), it is therefore not available to the public, of course, will have to go into the hands of APM Copter Dev Team who will decide whether to adopt it in an upcoming release.
The results in my video are great, sorry but the audio is bad because it was very windy today, however, is clearly seen as a "Hybrid" works, is almost perfect.
In the second video by Julien you can see the Hybrid in action vs a "DJI Phantom 2" quad with "Naza 2" inside, imho Hybrid work better than the "GPS Position Hold" of DJI, especially on braking.
The tests were carried out on APM and VR Brain, but of course will work on any board that installs "APM Copter" as PX4 and Pixhawk.
I will keep you updated on the "Hybrid" developments, i'll open a discussion about this with other APM Copter developers to assess any changes in the code.

I want to say thanks to Sandro and Julien for their great work!

Bests, Marco

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Comments

  • Jared, what you want is wingcopter's code .http://www.wingcopter.com/

    Unfortunatelly, they told on this forum they would probably share their code but I've not find anything atm.

  • I was hoping this is a flight mode that allows transition between types of flight eg multirotor to airplane

  • This is a great ideal, wonderful what the results are when you get a lot of ppl working on a project. Great minds producing better and better systems. Thanks for all the hard work so I can enjoy flying even more.

    New Member TLArford  Have a good journey and enjoy life along the way.

  • great! hope it will be adopted soon

  • Developer

    No Mustafa, check my video now, is subtitled.
    During Loiter you can move your multirotor like with Wookong-M but not in the same way, i always feel a bit "tied" to his 3d position, although impart all command, for example full ALE or ELE he will move respecting a maximum speed, namely that of navigation (there's a parameter called "WPNAV_LOIT_SPEED").
    With Wookong-M during "GPS ATTI" you can fly like in "ATTI", now with "Hybrid" you can do the same thing with APM Copter, Hugues explained exactly how it works.

  • @Hugues, thanks for clearing out. We are at the aerial video business you can check on www.facebook.com/airvision27 we are using dji wookong m. Dji as you may know dji has 3 modes, Manual, GPS Atti and Atti mode. We mostly fly in gps mode because it is crazy smooth. When in gps mode, if you move forward, it moves straight forward not a little side ways and when you let go the sticks it stays right there till you send another stick command. So loiter was something else than this? I mean if i wanna hold the copter stationary be in loiter mode if i wanna move forward go back to atti mode?

  • MR60

    @Mustafa, before (loiter mode) is made to hold your quad in a fixed 3D position. After (smart loiter or position hold or whatever new name will be chosen) is made to combine flying normally when sticks are moved (beyond a dead zone you can configure) and to go back in loiter mode automatically when you release the sticks.

  •  i am new to ardu family, i did not get what was before and what is after. 

  • The name I propose is "Smart Loiter".

    I am available and interested, to do some testing on this flight mode on my multirotor with VRBrain 4.5 ;-)

  • You have forgotten, "spaghetti" 

    However,  great job !

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