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PID position Controller for Arducopter with VICON Measurements!

Posted by Usman Qayyum on August 29, 2013 at 3:30pm

We have developed a PID position controller that can communicate with arducopter via 3DR radio. The position controller is running on the ground computer and transmitting the commands to hexacopter at 50HZ via mavlink protocol. The mavlink packet used during our test flights is "set_roll_pitch_yaw_thrust_send". We have tested the hovering flight for the developed controller. Please email me, if source code is required.

Thanks

Tags: arducopter, hexacopter, pid, position, vicon, controller
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Comments

  • T.C. September 17, 2013 at 6:03am

    Great work! I am trying to build a system using ground based kinect (still far away from testing...) and hoping that your code could help. So one more interest in code.....

  • Usman Qayyum September 12, 2013 at 2:48pm

    Alex thanks, Surely will share soon!.

    @Arseni: it uses vicon (motion capturing system) and onboard arducopter IMU for hovering. Cheers

  • Alex September 7, 2013 at 1:33am

    It would be really appreciated if you can share your code with me! Very interested on this implementation!

  • Alex September 7, 2013 at 1:31am

    Awesome and congratulations!

  • Arseni Timofeev September 2, 2013 at 7:04am

    Very cool!

    Are there any special sensors on the copter? Or is it based on regular Acc. sensors?

  • Usman Qayyum September 2, 2013 at 3:05am

    Hi Cliff-E, thanks for your comment, I haven't experience at bottleneck with 50Hz while using 3DR radio communication.

    Though i have to change the arducopter code little bit. Mavlink receiver function (at arducopter side) runs alternatively whereas when we are sending  the commands from ground computer, we want that function to run at full rate in the arducopter. By doing the said change, it works fine without any glitches.

  • Usman Qayyum September 2, 2013 at 3:00am

    thanks for your interest. I will definitely share the code (hopefully after ICRA deadline i.e. 15 Sept, as the code requires commenting and bit cleaning).

    many thanks  

  • Moderator
    Alex September 1, 2013 at 1:19pm

     Nice stuff :-)

    Any chance of sharing the source code as I am interested in doing something similar (but not with vicon) and would be great to have something to start with.

  • Cliff-E August 29, 2013 at 9:21pm

    Good job!!

    I've been wanted to add in vicon data to APM quadcopters. Just it was put on the back-burner until this winter. We have a PX4 system running w/vicon but it's not through MAVLink, though the setup is similar (position controller off board) and sending v-rates to the copter--which is the preferred method w/well known research groups. I would like to get the controller on board--and just broadcast vicon data to the quad. You're going to find you need more than 50Hz if you keep the position controller off-board. Wireless will be the bottleneck.

    We have some other vehicles (can't mention what) using vicon and APMs through Vicon's VPRN server into ROS into MAVLink... and again 50Hz doesn't cut it.

  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson August 29, 2013 at 4:00pm

    Looks awesome! Many congrats...

This reply was deleted.