With the plane down from the tree and taped up, we were the last team of the day to do the last run. The winds had picked up to 10-15mph, gusting even higher. We had one run to hit it. Jordi took off, went downwind and switched it into autonomous mode. It made the first waypoint (into the wind) easy and them zoomed by the second one, then took the third waypoint (downwind) really wide. Then it started heading back into the wind towards the finish line. Oh no, it looks like it's too close to the building and we're going to cut a corner! But then, at the last minute, the plane corrected, moving slowly into the wind, and drifted to clear the corner by about a foot. Then straight and true over the finish line!
36 seconds! First place! Hurray!!!!!
Great achievement, Chris & Jordi,
I wish I could have attended and watched your win. I work in Denver and commute from Colorado Springs, but I had to much work to do, design databases for Dex. Maybe I can go out to SF and LA this summer and meet with both of you. It was very windy all along the front range today. Some gusts to 50mph. I would have entered my Stryker as it handles the wind well, but my ArduPilot is not ready yet.
Find more videos like this on DIY Drones
Something I noticed in the map is somewhat infrequent updates. Jordi moved the xbee antenna at one point, so this may have been a congested area, but it seems fair to suggest that 4 waypoints and 360 degrees in 35 seconds is pressing the lower limits of resolution for the gps, and part of the waypoint challenge was the shoehorning of a flight path into principally a ground race. It should not go unsaid however, that most of the ground vehicles found the gps even more difficult, as Jordi had a much better gps signal than anything below the roof of the Sparkfun building - but they also had more time to integrate the gps signals.
Hopefully you can appreciate how close Jordi put those waypoints to the building. He was flying as tight as humanly possible in the alley. If you didn't get the 1 mile circle idea, hopefully you can see much room there was to loosen the path.
Comments
I wish I could have attended and watched your win. I work in Denver and commute from Colorado Springs, but I had to much work to do, design databases for Dex. Maybe I can go out to SF and LA this summer and meet with both of you. It was very windy all along the front range today. Some gusts to 50mph. I would have entered my Stryker as it handles the wind well, but my ArduPilot is not ready yet.
-tychoc
Find more videos like this on DIY Drones
Something I noticed in the map is somewhat infrequent updates. Jordi moved the xbee antenna at one point, so this may have been a congested area, but it seems fair to suggest that 4 waypoints and 360 degrees in 35 seconds is pressing the lower limits of resolution for the gps, and part of the waypoint challenge was the shoehorning of a flight path into principally a ground race. It should not go unsaid however, that most of the ground vehicles found the gps even more difficult, as Jordi had a much better gps signal than anything below the roof of the Sparkfun building - but they also had more time to integrate the gps signals.
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
of 4 Next