Over the last few of months I have been making regular visits to the lab of Dr. Alejandro Ramirez-Serrano at the University of Calgary. Called the Autonomous Reconfigurable/Robotic Systems Laboratory (AR2SL) it specializes in research related to (from the web site): 1) Ground and aerial unconventional unmanned vehicle systems (UVS), 2) reconfigurable intelligent mobile robotic systems, 3) swarm robotics, 4) intelligent control for UVS, and 5) search & rescue applications of mobile robotics.
Roughly once a month, and on a very informal basis, a tour is organized where there is a walkthrough of the lab followed by lunch and discussion. The objectives are simple: expose Dr. Ramirez-Serrano's work to a broader audience, and try and coalesce interest in UAV work in Southern Alberta. Thought is also being given to setting up a semi-permanent Meetup group to pursue these objectives.
If you would like to be included in one of these upcoming tours, by all means, please get in touch and we can make the necessary arrangements. A photo from a recent tour, which shows the Evader bicopter prototype. Additional pictures can be found at shard Photo Streams for the tours that ran on 2012-10-18 and 2012-12-13.
Comments
flying the Nymbus birotor two days ago behind the Mech Eng building at the University of Calgary
Cool, Dan, very helpful, thanks! Do you have any pictures/videos of your vehicle you want to post?
Gary -- I'm gearing up to do a small, hobby-grade version of a bicopter, which in the first iteration will use simple thrust vectoring. I intend to use the Hobby King KK2 controller and their single access thrust vectoring motor mount. Do you have any recommendations on sizing the actuator servo for the latter? I'm wondering if there is a calculation that can be used, or is it just trial and error?
Hi everyone, I'm the designer and builder of the eVader aircraft in the photograph. Dan wasn't far off about using cut-off sand pails for the ducts. I used some garden planters from Home Depot.
The basic APM code for the eVader is the same as for the Nymbus bicopter, shown here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV5dIh7hGM8
however the Nymbus is constrained to single axis tilting (and flies like a conventional heli or quadcopter), whereas the eVader's prop motors are gimballed in both directions. Though we haven't yet modified the program to utilize it, gimballing will allow advanced features like stationary pitch or flying fast forward while perfectly horizontal. Hope this helps. Btw, thanks Terence.
Gary
I believe the Evader is running custom code written by Gary Gress of Gress Aeronautics. He is a member here and I have pinged him about this thread, so perhaps he'll be able to provide a little bit more info.
Don't know a lot about it other than it used ducted fans and apparently had quite decent performance. I'll see if the prof can provide a few more details. In the interim, here is a cropped image which provides a little more detailed of this particular vehicle.