Posted by Chris Anderson on September 29, 2009 at 2:08pm
[UPDATE: This one proved a bit harder than we thought, so we're going to extend the deadline by two weeks, to 12:00 midnight PST on Sunday, October 18th.
Also, here's a preview of next month's contest: Break the Stanford team's UAV altitude record of 7,142 feet by doing at least 24 circles with a 300ft climb and descent in each! (This won't really beat his official record, because there won't be an official judge there. But you'll get bragging rights, at least). I'll announce full details on Oct 19th]
The first Trust Time Trial (T3) contest was a great success. Lots of entries, nail-biting competition, awesome performances and lots of learning for all.
Now comes round two. The difference this time are as follows:
--Three laps
--3D waypoints. (must hit altitude targets as well as lat/long)
The prize this time is a Global Hawk kit.
Winning entries must be posted in the comments below by midnight PST on Sunday, October 4th 18th.
Rules:
1) Must complete the pattern as shown above, totally autonomously. Go into autonomous mode before waypoint 1 and stay in for three laps. The four points are arranged in a square, with 200m on a side (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.
2) Altitude must be within +-10m of given altitude at each waypoint. It doesn't matter what your altitude is in between waypoints. All altitudes are either above launch position or the contestant's specified "safety altitude".
3) Fastest time to complete three laps and hit the 3D waypoints wins. Must provide GPS track with timestamps and on-board video. (If you don't have/can't afford a small onboard videocamera like the FlyCamOne 2, we'll let it go this time. But in the future: video or it didn't happen!)
GPS tracks are best achieved with an onboard GPS datalogger, like the i-Blue 747 or smaller Sanav ML-7. But if you don't have one or don't want to add the weight, you can just capture the GPS track from your telemetry stream, although you'll have to figure out how to convert it to KML format to export to Google Earth (see below). If your Ground Control System has a built-in map+track function, a screen shot of that is fine, but it should be possible for people to check to confirm that your leg lengths are at least 200m.
Evidence data should include these four things:
1) Total time, along with aircraft and autopilot used. A photo of the aircraft would be nice.
2) Screen capture of path exported to Google Earth or an equivalent, annotated with waypoints and where autonomy began and ended. :
3) GPS datalog file, any format
4) Onboard video, embedded from YouTube or Vimeo. [Not absolutely required but requested]
Dean for those of us excel challenged or just because it would be nice) it sure would be great to have the graphing automatic like the pap system. I am trying to plot my actual elevation to my waypoints and the gps elevations as shown on Vas's plot.... but it's way too much like work ;-)
I also plan to have my mentor with the Ardupilot try this out on wed.
cool stuff Dean we have already emailed about this and I appreciate the quick response as usual. I put my gains back to where I had it flying well. I had increased them as per an email from you and chris but I just put them in the middle of mine and yours and it's flying the best it has ever flown. So long story short I also made a typo putting my elevations in so the poor little star had to climb 75m instead of 25m.... lol... I am re-doing it all now... it should be much faster this time. I wont post my last one but I expect to make all elevtions now that I have increased my elevator gain.
Steve - which gain did you try to increase? If you want to make navigation snappier, then some gains can be adjusted, and others should not be touched. I see I have a new e-mail from you so I will digest that first.
Atto navigation improvements have been on hold the last 6 months as export CRAP and IMU work are real life cloggers. There are some serious navigation improvements in the pipeline, as well as more user-friendly GCS-driven waypoint creation.
Yes, the flight plan is basically circles at each waypoint with conditions to proceed to the next waypoint when a certain heading is reached. The radius of each circle is configurable through the flight plan.
I am going to try again tomorrow morning. I certainally don't expect to beat that time but I have to get this running better. I tried last friday but I increased the gain too much and it was an epeleptic fit up there ;-)
very nice!!! not gonna lie the pap system really looks good. Do you have the option to specify a radius around a point etc? my atto just goes straight to the point, banks at bout 45 degs and cranks it... if I specify points around each waypoint then I have a long road of spedifying altitudes etc etc.... I really hope the atto gets going on a better waypoint plotting program....
Comments
I also plan to have my mentor with the Ardupilot try this out on wed.
Atto navigation improvements have been on hold the last 6 months as export CRAP and IMU work are real life cloggers. There are some serious navigation improvements in the pipeline, as well as more user-friendly GCS-driven waypoint creation.
Yes, the flight plan is basically circles at each waypoint with conditions to proceed to the next waypoint when a certain heading is reached. The radius of each circle is configurable through the flight plan.
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