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Pushing the UAV DevBoard to the limits

Posted by Bryan Cuervo on November 18, 2009 at 5:06pm

Tailless & Wingletless from Bryan Cuervo on Vimeo.

In one more attempt to test the abilities and push the limits of Bill's UAV DevBoard, I removed the winglets from my tailless design so now there are no horizontal or vertical stabilizers.The video is in three segments; the first showing manual flight with stabilization disengaged. You can see the difficulty I had flying a tight figure eight pattern. The next segment displays flight in stabilized mode which is noticeably smoother and the last shows turns at three waypoints.Even without the vertical stabilization, there is some yaw stability due to the wing sweep but it is obvious and pretty impressive that the DevBoard firmware can still handle a plane with marginal roll, pitch and yaw stability. Enjoy the cheesy music-----Note: cheesy music replaced with cool music.
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Comments

  • Bryan Cuervo November 24, 2009 at 2:35pm
    Graham,
    I've not been able to get an accurate altidude hold yet but I guess it depends on how you define "accurate". A few plots on the referenced blog show the altitude vs time but I really need to tweek the variables more. I'm also flying a fast plane which tends to push the limits of the AP.
    I saw your post on RC Groups and it sounds like you may need a more complete system like Attopilot.
  • Moderator
    Graham Dyer November 24, 2009 at 9:37am
    I'm looking for a more 'pro' type UAV system and have seen a UDB equipped plane fly by Greg (Belli Button) and was very impressed. Your GPS tracks look good with relatively straight lines which is what I need, is the altitude hold pretty accurate too?
  • Bryan Cuervo November 24, 2009 at 5:00am
    Hi Graham,
    I played around with ArduPilot for around six months and got my plane to successfully fly waypoints three times. Hopefully, by this time, the bugs have been worked out.
    The DevBoard performance has been pretty amazing and consistent. Also, Bill has been great to work with and has always been willing to help with any questions/issues I've had. I'm still working on tweaking the altitude hold and as far as tracking performance to waypoints, check out my posts here.
    Bryan
  • Moderator
    Graham Dyer November 24, 2009 at 2:47am
    Hi Bryan, so the DevBoard seems to work very well, how does it compare to ArduPilot? Is it's waypoint and altitude hold very accurate? Also it seems to fly pretty straight to a waypoint?
  • Rana November 18, 2009 at 5:42pm
    Hey Bryan ! nice music added !
  • 13brv3 November 18, 2009 at 5:07am
    Nice test Bryan. I've been planning to try that as well, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Spot on about the cheesy music too :-)

    Rusty
  • Bryan Cuervo November 18, 2009 at 4:29am
    Yeah Curt,
    I'm running out of ways to push the autopilot over the limit. I could try:
    1- Flying waypoints upside down
    2- Flying stabilized mode with the CG behind the neutral point
    etc-----
  • Curt Filipowski November 17, 2009 at 9:27pm
    Bryan...you might have just forced me to buy the devboard for my wing. It looks to be proving itself time and time again in your wing. Now you just need it doing rolling circles while following waypoints. ;)
  • Rana November 17, 2009 at 6:43pm
    Excellent Bryan !
    For this Hats off to Ben Levitt & Bill !
This reply was deleted.