The upcoming 3.5.0 release of APM:Plane includes support for QuadPlane - a hybrid plane/multi-rotor that allows for high speed long distance flight with vertical takeoff and landing.
The above video shows a converted HobbyKing Firstar 2000 doing a fully autonomous mission, with VTOL takeoff, followed by automatic transition to fixed wing flight and then a VTOL landing. The planes builder, Jack Pittar from CanberraUAV, is shown with the plane below.
The plane itself was fairly easy to build, with the simple additional of rectangular section aluminium arms on the Firstar wings and 4 quad motors.
One issue we found is that the battery we are using (a 3S 4Ah 65C) doesn't handle the 65A needed for vertical takeoff well, with the voltage dropping to 10V on takeoff. After takeoff completes and it transitions to fixed wing flight it quickly recovers. We will be changing the battery setup for future flights.
A second issue is that the wings tend to twist a bit in flight, especially when yaw is commanded. That greatly reduces yaw authority when hovering. We are still thinking about the best ways to prevent wing twist.
The new QuadPlane support is documented at http://plane.ardupilot.com/wiki/quadplane-support and is included in the 3.5.0beta1 release (I will do a separate blog post on that release shortly).
In the near future we expect to add support for other hybrid frame types, including tilt-rotors and fixed wing aircraft with other types of multi-rotor frames attached.
This QuadPlane follows on from our earlier Senior Telemaster QuadPlane which used two Pixhawk flight controllers.
We built the Firstar QuadPlane to test the new code where a single flight controller board running APM:Plane is used, which makes for much simpler operation. We plan on now building a much larger version, with a 50cc petrol motor for fixed wing flight.
Comments
F'n BRAVO!!!!! This makes me SQUEAL!!! I can't tell you how many times I couldn't help in a SAR situation because I could NOT find a place to take off from! I LOVE YOU!!!
@iskess I dont have any stats at the moment (still tuning and testing). I know that i flew a 6600 4s1p lipo. I did 2 flights that were takeoff - transition - quick circle - transition - land (2 times) and charged 1600mAh after that.
the plane including quad weighs 3.5kg and cruises at about 60% throttle, it feels like an additional kg would be possible. The quad provides a maximum of 6kg thrust. you could also use a 10x6 prop, what will probably give you a bit more.
I will do some more testing soon to be able to answer these questions.
Sorry Sander, I somehow managed to miss that yaw is not corrected with the weather vane mode now. Makes my previous comment redundant too. Maybe I should learn to read first... :-)
BTW out of interest I was wondering what your hover and plane mode amp draw is on your quadranger, and its MTOW, if you have that info handy.
Regards JB
@JB: no need for any of that. just use the weather vane effect (don't correct yaw) and the plane will magically point itself into the wind.
I have been planning to add forecast.io in GCS to check if weather conditions don't exceed maximum given an mission timeframe.
+1 Sander on the NAV_CMD_VTOL_TAKEOFF. Takeoff into wind, then at altitude next WP - would be the correct method to takeoff for a quadplane.
The question is where does it get the wind direction from? A manual input via GCS, internet weather update (typically unreliable for local info) or local weather vane/station on site? Maybe use the heading from vehicle placement on arm would be easiest if the user orients it correctly into the wind? The aircraft is unlikely to produce a reliable wind direction on the ground so another source would be required, even if an accurate on aircraft wind direction sensor combination was possible.
Thinking about it some more, a live weather overlay on a GCS would be a good feature to have anyway, along with a way to share the weather data to other nearby users/swarm. ;-)
Thank's sander, your damaged wings remember me that I have an old wings that I can practice with them and have a two posibilities skywalker to compare; this function is awesome.
@cala
Here's my build log for the quadranger: http://px4.io/docs/quadranger-vtol/
The flying time is marginally affected. Takeoff to 25m, transition, transition back and land costs about 800mAh on the quadranger config.
How cuad plane reduces flying time vs only plane?
What happens with cuad props during plane flying? they don't disturb flying?
Is there any post about recommendations to setup a cuad-plane?
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