quadcopter overview from Brothers Olson on Vimeo.
Oh no I'm making this quad world, funny how quad posts all arrive together just like buses, I thought this chap had done well and this was worth sharing.
Looking further they seem to know what they are doing...
Quad Copter footage from Brothers Olson on Vimeo.
Comments
Thank you for your interest! The position estimation filter is a KF home brew of mine. It works pretty well in most instances, but can become the victim of center point drift in certain situations (e.g. high vibration environments). We are working on a full blown EKF implementation which will substantially improve this. Additionally we are about to launch a new board with all digital sensors which will give us finer resolution and further improve these calculations.
Don't take this the wrong way, all your comments would still be an accurate generalisation :)
Optimizing the flight profile is also crucial for long flight times. The key is to determine its most efficient loading (minimize A/kg), machine's horizontal cruise speed (minimize mAh/m at a specific weight) and learn how to fly with the wind, not against it (not having the pilot/autopilot correct drift if it isn't necessary... frequent throttling eats more power than doing one large correction per waypoint).
Acrobatic flight is of course not going to get anywhere near this. I'm a slow flyer.
One day the 1-hour milestone will fall.