Blogs

New announcement from BirdsEyeView:

BirdsEyeView Aerobotics is proud to introduce AvA: Advanced VTOL Autonomy for the FireFLY6.  AvA is the culmination of a year of behind-the-scenes development and testing, producing a powerful, elegant single controller autopilot solution for the FireFLY6. 

AvA is flight control firmware, designed for the PX4hawk autopilot, that gracefully handles the FireFLY6 in all regimes – takeoff to landing.  Flight mode transitions from hover to forward flight (and back) are fully AvA-controlled, making transitions a simple matter of flicking a switch.  No special radio programming or piloting techniques required.

AvA also enables fully-scripted autonomous operations, where all flight behavior (including transitions) can be preplanned using map-based point-and-click commands in our custom interface, FireFLY6 Planner.

FireFLY6 Planner runs on your Windows laptop or tablet, providing a real time link to the aircraft via the telemetry radio set included with your PX4hawk.  This allows for continuous monitoring of the FireFLY6’s health and location as well as point-and-click retasking. 

In particular, we focused on making mapping missions with the FireFLY6 easy, with intuitive access to the necessary flight planning and image georeferencing tools in FireFLY6 Planner.  This makes the FireFLY6 a killer mapping platform when combined with our upcoming mapping camera mounts, which are compatible with the FireFLY6 Gimbal Mount Kit – giving your FireFLY6 mapping bird the flexibility to also excel in gimbal-based aerial observation tasks (aerial videography, search & rescue, powerline/pipeline monitoring, etc).

AvA is available now in three different flavors, defined by your choice of key.  AvA keys unlock different levels of functionality, each level aimed at a specific user group: Sport, Pro, and Mapping.  More information on AvA keys and the functionality that they unlock can be found here.

AvA and the FireFLY6 Planner are built on a foundation provided by the APM Project.  AvA is a heavily modified version of APM:Copter, stripped down to the simple essentials and tailored to the FireFLY6, incorporating a special brew of custom forward flight algorithms and select functionality borrowed fromAPM:Plane.  Similarly, FireFLY6 Planner is a heavily modified version of the APM Project’s Mission Planner, lovingly recrafted in BirdsEyeView Aerobotics style with the FireFLY6 as a centerpiece. 

As a result of AvA’s APM heritage and PX4 backbone, we’re also happy to announce our membership in theDronecode Project.  We look forward to being active members of the open source aerobotics community.

Say hello to the FireFLY6 with AvA Onboard.  Welcome to the Revolution.