Two and half years ago, we started the T3 (Trust Time Trial) Contest here at DIY Drones. The idea was simple: give people a mission to accomplish, on their own field and on their own time. They would record the telemetry, and submit a KML file with the result (we "trust" that it hasn't been faked). We could then compare the result and decide who was the winner (fastest time, best pattern, etc), as if they had all been racing/competing head-to-head.
Back then, it was an accomplishment just to complete an autonomous mission with a regular plane. But we've made a lot of progress since then, and that's now possible with a multicopter or traditional helicopter, too. So it's time to relaunch the T3 Competition. And we're going to do it by returning to the first mission ever: the Figure Eight, but this time expanded to include copters.
Figure Eight Mission Rules:
- There are two categories: Fixed Wing and Rotary Wing (multicopters or traditional helis). 1st, 2nd and 3rd place awards will be given in both.
- Must complete the pattern as shown above, totally autonomously (go into auto mode before waypoint 1 and exit after you hit waypoint 1 again). The four points are arranged in a square, with 200m on a side for fixed wing aircraft and 100m on a side for rotary wing aircraft (obviously the two diagonal paths are longer). Any aircraft/autopilot allowed. It doesn't matter how close to the waypoints you get, as long as you pass on the outside of them.
- Altitude is not graded.
- Fastest time in each category to hit all points and return to 1 wins (one lap).
- The Judge will be Gary Mortimer, as always!
- Deadline is Sunday, Dec 11th, at midnight PST.
- 1st Prize in each category is a $100 gift certificate to the DIY Drones store. 2nd and 3rd prizes are $25 each.
Entries should include these three things:
- Total time, along with aircraft (and type: fixed or rotary wing) and autopilot used. A photo of the aircraft would be nice, too.
- KML file of the run (an onboard video is also encouraged, but not required)
- Screen capture of path exported to Google Earth or an equivalent, annotated with waypoints and where autonomy began and ended. Here's a sample from my first entry, way back then (original ArduPilot!):
Comments
Jeremy what is the wind direction ?
Hi Jeremy,
It looks like a perfect straight line is plotted for a portion of the flight between WP2 and WP3. I think that means that communications to your ground station was lost on that leg, so the plot includes a line between two distant points.
Best regards,
Bill
Jeremy, that's a good start! What version of the code were you using?
Ah the heavy hitters are here now! time to start creating the multicopter movers are wimps badges me thinks ;-)
Colin I have placed a mirror in front of my screen and it seems your track is fine.
Here is the KMZ file for my flight.
I decided to let my plane fly three laps. Notice how repeatable the tracks are. The fastest time around the course is 1:37, for the second lap, measured from the start of the red portion of the track in the second lap, to the end of the green track in the second lap.
Time: 1:37
Aircraft: Fixed wing, EasyStar, brushed motor, 2 cell LiPo battery
Autopilot: MatrixPilot trunk, r1110 running on a UAVDevBoard, version3
GPS: EM406A
The plane is an EasyStar that I have been using for two years to do research and development. It still has the original brushed motor that comes with the EasyStar. The modifications that I made were to put in a better Rx, and to attach a couple of playing cards to the rudder, and use a 2 cell 1350 mAh LiPo battery instead of the NiCad that comes with an EasyStar. With just a single 2 cell battery, the plane is really too light to fly, and the CG is way off, so I always put 2 batteries (4 cells all together) into the plane, one of them just "deadheading", and goes along for the ride.
There is a small chunk missing from one of the wings that was torn out when the plane hit the frame of a soccer net during an autonomous landing.
I place the GPS on the outside of the plane for better accuracy. I find that the mismatch between the electromagnetic surge impedances of air and foam, and the thickness of the foam, is great enough to slightly weaken the GPS signal inside the plane.
Bill Premerlani
I purchased one of the first Ardupilots back in 2009. Oh, how I wished I could get that thing to work. I spent days that summer trying to get my GWS Slowstick to return to home, and would run around the field holding the thing just to get it to make control surface assertions, etc. Fast-forward two years: This past week, I finally mounted the APM, which I purchased earlier this year, into my "Bravo" flying wing. Despite two difficult midterms this past the week, I found the time to get the thing flying. Below is evidence of what the ArduPilotMega can do with minimal PID tuning and tweaking:
Class: Fixed Wing - Flying Wing 125 cm Wingspan
Time: 1:40
KML: Here
Main Blog entry with full description: Here
In the spirit of the season: Thanks to all the developers and leaders of DIYDrones, and for the work you've accomplished! This is awesome!
-Steve Carlson
Electrical Engineering Undergrad, Brigham Young University - Provo, UT.
Well done Cliff and Oli, some very good times there. Looking forward to seeing some pictures of your airframe Oli.
I’ve realised now that my flight was of the mirror image of the figure of eight shown, so I don’t know if it will still count? It could be comical seeing it in Venice going the wrong way. I hope to get some more attempts in, but the right way around, oh and in less than 51 seconds :P
My entry was with a Twinstar II, it took 61 seconds and photos of the airframe can be found here. I set the cruise speed to 25m/s for this run, here’s the screen grab from google earth showing the flight:
Here are links for the log (with the GPS times) and the kmz.
I used my Ardustation to tweak the settings to fly more aggressively as I was going along in my warm up laps. I only had the one fresh lipo on me and it was a bit of a rush attempt, hence why I flew in the wrong direction.
I hope there aren’t too many ebay style snipe entries. The lack of multicopters certainly is interesting. Sounds like I might have to strap my APM onto my 15$ HK quad frame and cross my fingers!
Thanks for organising the contest, I will dare to enter again :-)
Don't worry we won't allow any previous entries and remember an entry will get you a place in the league so there will be a chance to do well in that by coming third or forth every time if you see what I mean.
It will be cool watching your entries flying around the Venice course together!
The lack of multicopters for the short course, that is interesting. I was hoping at least one multi would try the full course. All those guys out there with various boards, I wonder why they are not keen?
Oli well done!
My name is Brian and I......
Enter as many times as you dare! If you check all the rounds last time we are pretty flexible in the judging department. This is just a bit of fun to push the boundaries and improve the entire system for everyone. Some big changes where made on the back of the comps.
Let your mind think its 1913 and the Schneider trophy is going to take the speed record from just under 50 miles an hour to over 400 mph. RJ Mitchell and Rolls Royce took their work in those races and the Spitfire was born. Lets innovate!!
Blimey just looked for a handy link and found this, it is more like the 1930's in UAS aviation than I thought right now.
The early 1930s were times of worldwide economic depression and as the date for the 1931 Schneider Trophy approached it seemed highly unlikely that the government would provide money for any new aircraft. Mitchell was frustrated. Like the Italians and Americans before, Britain was now in a position to win the Schneider Trophy outright, with three consecutive wins, but Supermarine were not able to fund the development of a new plane and, despite declarations of intention to compete from both France and Italy at the end of 1930, the government announced in January 1931 that expenditure of public money to support the contest was not justified
http://www.rjmitchell-spitfire.co.uk/schneidertrophy/1931.asp?secti...
Perhaps we ought to have a triangle race track next.
The aim of the contest is to have fun and push the limits. Their will be broken airframes. Thats the way of things.
Maybe if there was enough interest we could have a scratch built class where we define the propeller that is to be used and you put that on whatever you want to build??
As for weather, well its always winter somewhere. DIYD is an international site!
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