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!
Comments
The release is pretty simple. Here is a picture from the back side showing a round piece of 1/8 inch plywood glued in to the back of a cutoff shampoo bottle. A rectangle was cut into the plywood to accept the servo, placing the center of rotation approx at the center point of the bottle. An alum bracket was cut and bent 90 degrees with a hole drilled to accept the servo horn.
Having the alum bracket cantilevered out like it is has proven to be a weak point. One possible mod would be to support the bracket from the front as well.
The servo I used was an extremely cheap ($4-5) sub-micro Blue Arrow servo from Hobby King. A more robust servo would help I'm sure with reliability.
As for counter balance, I had a camera mounted in the opposite wing that more or less balanced it out.
Thanks for the comments!!
B
nice mechanism, does the alu L angle set to rotate 90 deg around the bottle( with servo inside the bottle) to open/close the opening in the bottom? How did you manage the difference in weight in two sides of wings ? thanks for close up picture?
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.
Now we will have to kill you!
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