Our precision landing Solo is flying great! :) This test rig has an IR-LOCK sensor (via I2C), an SF/10A rangefinder (via Serial), and is running a customized precision landing firmware based on APM:Copter (solo-rebase). The video above shows two vision-guided landings. The full 10-landing test sequence is shown below. The typical landing accuracy ranges from 0-10cm, even in moderate/gusty wind.
One of the primary challenges of designing a precision landing UAV system is the controls tuning. Every UAV has different flight characteristics, and finding the right PID (+EKF) parameters can be a painstaking process. So it is very helpful to have a popular, consistent hardware platform (e.g., Solo) to develop on. Solo flies nicely out of the box without significant parameter modifications. The precision landing performance is noticeably better than our IRIS+ platform, and our previous Solo test platform (w/out a laser rangefinder). In the 10-landing test sequence, the typical landing accuracy ranged from ~0-10cm. There was only one ‘failure’ (landing #5 out of 10), in which the copter landed far outside of the specified bounds. This will be analyzed and corrected via the controls code.
This test platform is running a customized precision landing firmware, which uses the vision-based localization data to actively manage the landing accuracy. You can read more about the code, and see previous testing here. USER BEWARE: this code is experimental, and it assumes that you have a reliable rangefinder connected.
Customized Firmware: ArduCopter-v2.px4
Github: http://bit.ly/1q3fIvS
Connecting IR-LOCK to Solo: Hackster.io article
Comments
Its looking great. Is the rangefinder installed and configured into the copter in the standard way or is your modified code somehow making use of the rangefinder information to more accurately land and extra configuration steps required? Or is it just an overall advantage as you get much more accurate altitude information from the rangefinder?
One scenario that concerns me is platform landing. I've seen some designs where they have the copter landing on a raised platform - think 1.5m off the ground but only 1x1m landing area. I am wondering what happens when the copter is "blown" slightly off the landing approach and the rangefinder suddenly see's an extra 1.5m of altitude.
Thanks, Grant.
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