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]
Hi, I would appreciate extension if its an option. After all, its autumn here and its either raining or windy or both. This task, however, is too much fun to let it go...
Don't worry theres always next month Jason, it will be straight forward. Maybe, as this task is so hard we could extend the time for entries for this task...... After all its our game.
I'm totally bummed I won't be able to get my plane in the air by the deadline. Life/Work seems to have gotten in the way. My Xbee's are still on backorder and my camera's in the shop...
Anyway, seems like there is a need to create an ongoing way to compare autopilots. Maybe something complex, but achievable so we have something to shoot for and can compare apples to apples. Is there something like this already?
Don't get too excited, this was not an entry, I just wanted to share my progress. Unless the weather improves, I am not likely to have an entry. The forecast is for heavy winds and rain.
If the weather improves, I will try a third flight with the EasyStar. Also, I have a Goldberg Endurance, with ailerons, which flies rather fast.
After I recently released the UAV DevBoard firmware with 3D waypoints, it was not my plan to enter the latest T3 contest, because I thought I did not have the equipment, and because I thought it would be lot of work to change the gains and parameters. The default settings for the firmware is focused on saiplanes, where the name to the game is to gain and conserve altitude.
Then, a few days ago, I checked the rules again, realized I did have the equipment to enter the contest. I thought it might be fun to try.
So far, I've made 2 flights with MatrixNav in an EasyStar. The image is from the 2nd flight. The pattern is this month's T3 pattern, rotated 30 degrees clockwise. The flying field is nestled between two tree-covered ridges, with a strong wind from the west which gets funnelled into the football field just to the west. You can almost see the wind pattern from the flight track.
My first flight (not shown) was made with MatrixNav straight out of the box on an EasyStar, straight out of the box. The plane hit all of its waypoints and altitudes, but it took 893 seconds, because half of the time the EasyStar was gliding with the motor off. Much too slow for an entry.
So, for the next flight, I changed the minimum throttle setting from 0.35 to 1.0, to run full throttle the whole flight. The second flight time was 305 seconds, but it is also not a contest entry, because it missed the altitude targets. During the second flight, the EasyStar went up ok, but came down too slow. I realized afterwards that was because with the motor running all of the time (no gliding), the descent pitch needed to be a bit steeper than what I set.
So I have changed the altitude pitch control settings, and am ready for a third flight. Except it is raining now, and it is supposed to rain most of the week here in upstate New York.
Still, I thought there might be a few people who would be interested in my progress.
Dean yup I have seem them but it does not help with putting the actual path in with all the options available.
What I was referring to was the plotting abilities of the data saved by the pap system. For atto I just open it in excel and make a chart etc etc. but one day it may be nice to just say plot me the elevation over time graph please.... nothing urgernt there are much more pressing matters than that... just a comment.
ABSOLUTELY the atto is very powerfull in what it can do... it can do many things that are more practical in the real word of my work and I thank you for that!
flying these patterns like I say is for fun and I am not here to win, just learn.
I am very happy with my atto. It kickes butt... but at the same time I am not gonna lie the softaware is lacking in course mapping.
Anyway Dean and I have already discussed this though so I won't plug up the thread.... just know I am happy and can't wait to be happier ;-)
David (aka bmw330i) and Steve - Atto has the same flight plan capability to fly a circle of defined radius and duration and altitude, then do another circle at any other radius/duration/location/altitude, then another circle, ad infinitum. Complete flexibility there. You can even set triggers to abort if a certain mAh upper limit is reached, and another trigger will cause a loiter at a waypoint until altitude is within 20m of target, just in case the altitude change was extreme and the UAV has not made the altitude change yet and you want to keep the UAV from proceeding to the next waypoint until altitude is reached. Example scenario is crossing a mountain.
Steve - haven't you seen the KML utilities in the Atto GCS (top right of GCS window)? It takes your LOG.txt, gives the flexibility to select individual flight(s) from within that LOG, and then generate 3D .kml plots, and even opens them for you in Google Earth if you want. There are about 6 check boxes of config settings. For example you can choose to display only certain flight mode types (R/C, ARC, HARC, Auto) and wether or not to have the "curtain" view of the lines drawn from the path to the ground.
Check it out. No need to manually manipulate the LOG in Excel with TEXT functions.
Comments
Anyway, seems like there is a need to create an ongoing way to compare autopilots. Maybe something complex, but achievable so we have something to shoot for and can compare apples to apples. Is there something like this already?
Don't get too excited, this was not an entry, I just wanted to share my progress. Unless the weather improves, I am not likely to have an entry. The forecast is for heavy winds and rain.
If the weather improves, I will try a third flight with the EasyStar. Also, I have a Goldberg Endurance, with ailerons, which flies rather fast.
Best regards,
Bill
After I recently released the UAV DevBoard firmware with 3D waypoints, it was not my plan to enter the latest T3 contest, because I thought I did not have the equipment, and because I thought it would be lot of work to change the gains and parameters. The default settings for the firmware is focused on saiplanes, where the name to the game is to gain and conserve altitude.
Then, a few days ago, I checked the rules again, realized I did have the equipment to enter the contest. I thought it might be fun to try.
So far, I've made 2 flights with MatrixNav in an EasyStar. The image is from the 2nd flight. The pattern is this month's T3 pattern, rotated 30 degrees clockwise. The flying field is nestled between two tree-covered ridges, with a strong wind from the west which gets funnelled into the football field just to the west. You can almost see the wind pattern from the flight track.
My first flight (not shown) was made with MatrixNav straight out of the box on an EasyStar, straight out of the box. The plane hit all of its waypoints and altitudes, but it took 893 seconds, because half of the time the EasyStar was gliding with the motor off. Much too slow for an entry.
So, for the next flight, I changed the minimum throttle setting from 0.35 to 1.0, to run full throttle the whole flight. The second flight time was 305 seconds, but it is also not a contest entry, because it missed the altitude targets. During the second flight, the EasyStar went up ok, but came down too slow. I realized afterwards that was because with the motor running all of the time (no gliding), the descent pitch needed to be a bit steeper than what I set.
So I have changed the altitude pitch control settings, and am ready for a third flight. Except it is raining now, and it is supposed to rain most of the week here in upstate New York.
Still, I thought there might be a few people who would be interested in my progress.
Best regards,
Bill Premerlani
What I was referring to was the plotting abilities of the data saved by the pap system. For atto I just open it in excel and make a chart etc etc. but one day it may be nice to just say plot me the elevation over time graph please.... nothing urgernt there are much more pressing matters than that... just a comment.
ABSOLUTELY the atto is very powerfull in what it can do... it can do many things that are more practical in the real word of my work and I thank you for that!
flying these patterns like I say is for fun and I am not here to win, just learn.
I am very happy with my atto. It kickes butt... but at the same time I am not gonna lie the softaware is lacking in course mapping.
Anyway Dean and I have already discussed this though so I won't plug up the thread.... just know I am happy and can't wait to be happier ;-)
Check it out. No need to manually manipulate the LOG in Excel with TEXT functions.
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