T3-Round 8: The egg-drop round!

Inspired by the Outback Challenge's waterbottle drop challenge, we're happy to now announce the start of the 8th round of the T3 Competition.

Your mission this time: have your UAV autonomously drop an egg as close to your home/launch position as possible (heads up!).

(Note: Our contest judge, Gary Mortimer, reminds us that it is illegal to drop any solid object out of an airborne vehicle in some countries, including the UK, so please check your local regulations to determine if this is legal in your area.)

How you have your UAV carry the egg and what mechanism you use to drop it is up to you (maybe a good time to use the built-in relay on your new ArduPilot Mega board?). The only requirement is that the drop be AUTONOMOUS--you need to set your autopilot to initiate the release when it detects that it's the right distance from the home location. The aircraft must be in forward motion with a speed of at least 15mph at the time of drop, and at least 50ft high (ie, no unfair advantage for quads!)

Because this first "T" in T3 stands for "trust", we're going to trust you to mark your home position and measure the distance the egg landed from that--no need to strap a GPS logger to the egg. The path your UAV takes before and after the drop doesn't matter, as long as it was under autonomous control during the drop part of the run. You will get EXTRA POINTS for an unbroken egg. How you achieve that (parachute, whatever) is up to to you, but please document your method with pictures.

Please submit the following in the comments as your entry: KML track of your UAV, with drop point, egg impact point, and "home" marked. Distance measured and reported, along with autopilot type. Please include a picture of your egg after it's landed, broken or not.

Scoring will be as follows: competitors will be ranked in closeness of egg to home. You get a 10m bonus for an unbroken egg.

Deadline: about six week from now--Sunday, September 5th at 12:00 midnight PST.

Have fun!

Brian, that is a very cool drop mechanism. So ingenious I should have come up with it! (Please appreciate the humor that is offered with) Are you using a servo to move the 'quick release' arm, or is there some other device at work inside your mechanism? If it is a servo, would you mind sharing the specs?

All my drop mechanisms have been developed around an elastic band (ranging from rubber bands up to sewing elastic) fixed on one side and then looped over the 'payload' and around a servo arm (or movement arm attached to a servo). That design, however tends to run into several issues, isn't always reliable at release, and has been known to crush certain payloads (my son's paper 'missiles' -- sorry Brakar) when not well calibrated. From the picture, your design would avoid all those pitfalls.

Again, congratulations -- I am in awe.

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Comments

Moderator

Gary Mortimer September 10, 2010 at 5:19am

I should have added with only three more rounds to 12 we should probably push through and declare the first league winner after 12 rounds. Even if it takes two years ;-) The points are close its still anyones game. Especially if somebody manages to get a list of chores written by Brians wife for him. Perhaps thats the next round.
Moderator

Gary Mortimer September 10, 2010 at 5:12am

I hope this posts ok, well here is the decision.... I am just a touch disappointed that there were no cooked egg images posted.

For Round 8, the one with eggs.

1. Mark 25
2. Brakar 18
3. Brian 15
4. Chris B 12

1. Brian Wolfe 76
2. Mark Griffin 51
3. Krzysztof Bosak 50
4. Brakar 46
5. Vassilis 24
6. Bill Premerlani 21
7. Jesse Jared 13
8. Andrus Kangro 12
8. Riccardo Kuebler 12
9. IOS 6
9. MarcS 6
9. Joe 6
10. Steve Joyce 5
10. Alexander Malikov 5
10. Hopslink 5
11. Steve Westerfield 3
11. Chris Anderson 3
12. Icebear 1
Ritchie September 10, 2010 at 3:29am

I believe as it was so well laid out from the start your algebra is correct. Just sucks I'd have loved to drop eggs from mine but UK doesn't allow it (even I live near to Salisbury plain and we always hear them blowing shit up and see them doing para runs).
Moderator

Gary Mortimer September 9, 2010 at 2:37pm

Look chaps, you have left me with a dilemma, all the entries are excellent for different reasons. How to judge this one? I am very tempted to have three way winners and I don't mean in the Wayne Rooney three way
Adam Barrow September 7, 2010 at 6:11pm

Brian, that is a very cool drop mechanism. So ingenious I should have come up with it! (Please appreciate the humor that is offered with) Are you using a servo to move the 'quick release' arm, or is there some other device at work inside your mechanism? If it is a servo, would you mind sharing the specs?

All my drop mechanisms have been developed around an elastic band (ranging from rubber bands up to sewing elastic) fixed on one side and then looped over the 'payload' and around a servo arm (or movement arm attached to a servo). That design, however tends to run into several issues, isn't always reliable at release, and has been known to crush certain payloads (my son's paper 'missiles' -- sorry Brakar) when not well calibrated. From the picture, your design would avoid all those pitfalls.

Again, congratulations -- I am in awe.
Moderator

Gary Mortimer September 7, 2010 at 2:34pm

Don't worry the Parrot people are the world leaders in getting the bad guys to look. http://www.suasnews.com/2010/09/1042/will-the-parrot-ardrone-make-f... Central London no less.
T3

Krzysztof Bosak September 7, 2010 at 2:32pm

And so everybody knows that 'Quickreleases ' is the word to search in order to buy proper mechanism...
Now we will have to kill you!
Moderator

Gary Mortimer September 3, 2010 at 6:10am

NIce one Brakar
Jason Lyons August 19, 2010 at 4:09pm

"HOWEVER nobody cares if the bottle will land intact! Nobody states: the bottle must stay visible after landing. Nobody states: you must not hit closer than x metres to the person, they say 'you must not hit him directly' (this is same as saying 'you must not hit a nearby scorpion on the left leg')."

I know this is a bit late, but the rules of the Outback Challenge do say that 500mL of water must be recoverable from the bottle after landing, so logically this means that the bottle does have to survive the landing intact.
T3

Krzysztof Bosak August 18, 2010 at 7:53am

I am surprised to see less than 5-10m error, because the GPS, wind, plus navigational precision.
Maybe because the test was GPS vs GPS reference.
The drop is absurdally precise, you have been awarded Egg Terrorist First Class Air Medal.

A few ultra curious questions.
How many tries?
Is the drop location is calculated in realtime?
As well as wind estimation?

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