Blogs

I've just finished the build and will begin early full up integration testing in the next day or so on NTNS-2.  This is a highly modified Stinger 64 with APM2.  There are really 2 airframes.  One is for flight testing, gain tuning, learning a little about APM2.  I have to admit that there have been several issues.  The two that i know that I have are the flash card slot being a bit less than tight, perhaps some formatting issues -and- the stock GPS lock issue.  For my installation this doesn't seem to bother time to 1st fix, but I am loosing lock in flight, dropping satellites.  I am NOT using a downlink, have the jumper removed, and power is being applied to the input and output sides with a Castle BEC Pro set at 5.05V.  SW version is 2.40.  Of course no red wire from the ESC.  The GPS is somewhat masked by some wires and the EDF mtr wires run just behind APM down to the fan.  It's not ideal for EMI.

Not to worry since this isn't the objective configuration and I just "score" APM when it has lock and the altitude is reasonable.  My 100 mph Stinger flight test bird:

Here's a picture from the Stinger HAB build.  It's pretty tight inside the bay:

Some of the BOM:

2-Castle BEC Pros (5.3 and 12V)

3-Omega Kapton heaters

1-external relay + helpful external LED

3-Airtronics 94761 servos for flight control

1-analog servo for the sailplane towhook release

APM2

Venus GPS/regulator/logic level converter

SparkFun datalogger

ReplayHD 1080p (heated) and externally powered

4s 5000 mAh battery

airspeed probe and pressure sensor

voltage and current sensor

Airtronics 10ch rcvr, Airtronics SD-10g TX

Very much modified Stinger 64 airframe (the only inexpensive component)

BRB APRS

I'm about 1/2 # lighter than NTNS-1; 1200g Kaymont

Total weight is 3# 2oz vs. the flight test bird at 2# (identical XCG and flight control setups)

Ballast is 2.3oz in the forward bay.

The result:

Testing, SW version catch up/merges, HIL testing with FlightGear/X-Planes, Temperature testing with APM1, duration testing, log testing...camera testing.... to follow.

From Diginfo.tv. Those are the gnarliest motion capture dot-holders I've ever seen. Why out on sticks? A commentor says they're using a motion capture system that's just a fraction of the cost of a Vicon. Anybody know anything about that? (Maybe someone who can read Japanese and can navigate the Chiba U website) 

The Nonami Group at Chiba University is developing drone robots for information gathering, and the group has demonstrated four multi-rotor helicopters, flying in formation using image processing.

"The cameras capture the markers, and send all the images to the host computer, which calculates the position and attitude. Positioning can be done to within 1 mm. The control frequency is 100 Hz, so position and attitude are calculated every 10 ms, to prevent collisions."

Each helicopter weighs 300g, and can carry a payload of 500 g. Currently, each has a 250 g battery, so they can carry cameras and other devices totaling 250 g.

"The current demonstration is an attraction, so it might be even more fun to have ten of these flying. Also, when they're actually gathering information outdoors, the more there are, the faster they can obtain information. So we're thinking of using formation flight with a commercial version."

"It's very difficult to create mathematical models for this type of drone. But we do quite rigorous modeling, with strong nonlinearity; that makes the models complicated. But we've designed a controller to match that complexity, and we're verifying that the drones can actually fly in a stable manner."

"On July 5, we took part in an emergency drill by the Police Department. The scenario was an explosion at a chemical plant. Our mission was to find out if people were on site, and return. We succeeded very well, and the Police Department said they'd like to introduce this system. It could also have lots of other applications. For example, it could be used to monitor volcanic eruptions, or to inspect power lines."

Interesting these folks are able to obtain permission to use a drone for a commercial endeavour, or did they?

This appears to be filmed in the US, so the FAA rules, should be applying to them too, right?

A friend had an accident, how much more you have to tell people to remove the props when uploading a new firmware.

Dude saying it was a "software error" on Multiwii...

and this is the result:

We're within a day or two of releasing ArduCopter 2.6.1 to the public in the Mission Planner. It's the best performing code we've flown and the waypoint accuracy is really impressive. You can check out Marco Robustini's video above to see an long-distance waypoint flight, some tight loiter at 5:30 (holding in a 1m box!) and a fun demo of autorotation.

A full list of changes is here, but they include:

Performance improvements:

• Better loiter, especially with the new 3DR uBlox GPS. Check out the video from Marco above!
• Better yaw control
• Better DCM implementation, resulting in noticeably smoother flight
• Better camera control, including improved setup in the Mission Planner.
• Etc

Bugfixes:

• Fix to dataflash erasing, which should resolve an issue some users were having
• Fix some MAVLink commands
• Fix Circle command
• Fix some units
• Etc

Enjoy. Sound is essential to appreciate this video ;-)

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Back:

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Imagery from a multiwii quadcopter. Described by Forbes:

Someone going by the name Tretch5000 has posted a truly haunting FPV (First Person Video) portrait of Detroit that mixes the lush greenery of the city’s Belle Isle with the decay of abandoned buildings. He used a camera mounted on a personal drone similar to the ones the U.S. Military uses to soar high above the landscape and skip along the ground, taking in the city’s ruins.

A new company called Rotary Robotics is planning a $100 drone, controlled by a smartphone, for aerial photography. They're planning to launch something in the $250-$300 range, with the price falling later. They call  it "Drones for Peace" (tagline: "@DronesForPeace provides eyes for the everyman. Tyranny has no place to hide.") and are a finalist in the MassChallenge competition for startups. A Kickstarter campaign is also planned.  

We are currently developing our first product, a $100 surveillance aircraft designed to bring airborne imagery to the masses. This aircraft functions as a flying point and shoot camera, allowing any operator to gather aerial photos or video with no prior training in aircraft or RC planes. The aircraft is preprogrammed through a map based application on your computer or smartphone.

The user selects the locations which are to be photographed and throws the aircraft. The plane automatically flys to these locations and takes the desired photos, after which it returns to its starting location and lands. The user can then download the photos from the aircraft onto their computer or other mobile device. The photos can be stitched together into a map or used for any desired photographic purpose.

(Via Co.Exist)

I finally finished the body for the ArduCopter. You can check my previous posts for the details but here are the pictures. 

balsawood frame

Skinned frame with tissue paper, a little filler and primer.

Final paint and detailing. Just need a coat of clear for extra protection.

ArduCopter logo on the back. 

Maybe somebody heard about IMAV - International Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Flight Competition. This year it was held in Braunschweig, Germany, 3-6 July. I was there and presented a paper about my project - SmartAP. Also our team took part in flight competition. Here is a short summary of the trip.
In general, teams from all European countries took part in conference and competition. Moreover, there were people from the United States, Australia and China too.

Ok, let's start. We got to Germany by plane, so the quad was disassembled and packed to prevent it from damages.

A couple of hours was spent on its assembly.

The next day was the first conference day. That day we (me and my co-author) made a presentation in "Guidance, navigation and control" section. The subject of my paper is "Micro Air Vehicle Autopilot For Commercial and Research Purposes":

The flight competition is divided into two parts - Outdoor and Indoor.
Each of both parts is also divided into two groups - Autonomy and Dynamics. In Autonomy one a vehicle had to fly far enough, recognize horizontal and vertical targets, then fly through arches, drop a ball and make precision landing. The Dynamics section required to demonstrate as many time as the vehicle can pass through arches in a certain amount of time (4 minutes).
Only FPV or fully autonomous piloting were allowed.

We took part only in Outdoor, generally because of our vehicle is too big to compete in indoor.
The good thing that we used the quad with our custom autopilot, presented the day before at the conference.

So, here is our ready to fly quad:

And here we go:

Here are some photos about what the other teams have:

Very interesting solution (by the way, based on Ardupilot Mega):

Our team enjoying the flights of the other guys:

The next day was dedicated to Indoor Flight Competition. Several teams took part in fully-autonomous mode. However, generally, participants flew in manual mode by FPV.

The place for the competition:

An only team, which took part in Indoor Dynamics in fully-autonomous mode. It was really impressive:

The other teams:

The last day, as well as the first, was dedicated to paper presentations.

As for the main trends, the most important subjects at the conference, in my opinion, were dedicated to autonomous navigation based on onboard video processing or laser range finders. Significant part of papers was about aerodynamics, especially about the researches on the new concept types of micro air vehicles.

Approximately half of participants in Outdoor Autonomy took part in autonomous mode and another half in manual FPV mode. However, in both Outdoor and Indoor dynamics almost all the teams took part in manual FPV mode.
It's very pleased to see the efforts to fly autonomously, but almost every team crashed at least once during their flights. Therefore, manual FPV flight remains to be more predictable and reliable so far. But likely so far...

Kirill

In case you weren't able to catch the webinar, here's a screen capture of the session.

I thought the webinar was great -- there were a few technical glitches, but the material was nicely organized and the participating developers did a great job of stepping through the code.  I enjoyed it and learned a lot. 

I thought I was capturing the session in super hi res mode, but apparently I suck at screen capture and the resolution isn't great; but it's good enough for following along what the speakers are saying.  The beginning was cut off as I was trying to figure out how to turn on the sound.  If someone has a better capture let me know and I'll add it here.

Update: now using much better quality screen capture by YureZzZ.  Thanks YureZzZ!

Many thanks to Andreas M. Antonopoulos for putting together a great outline for this webinar.  I'm certainly looking forward to seeing more of these! (private note to Andreas: SITL!)

FPV Raptors shipment has come in & for a limited time, Cheap Drones is selling them for only $99 dollars! Sale ends quick, so hurry.

http://www.cheapdrones.com

http://www.cheapdrones.com/products/planes/fpvraptor

 From IEEE Spectrum:

The reason to go with little tiny rockets for microrobots (as opposed to a more conventional propulsion system powered by batteries) is fairly straightforward: energy density: you can get a lot more energy per unit of mass from a rocket than you can from a battery. These particular rockets use APCP (Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant), and each has multiple stages, with integrated "delay charges" that modulate the thrust from the rocket by significantly reducing its output for up to about five seconds. Here's what the design looks like:

As IEEE Spectrum aptly titles this video:

"BWAHAHAHA DID YOU SEE THOSE PUNY HUMANS FLEE IN TERROR?!"

This is an awesome compilation of my best FPV flights from the first half of the summer since I moved home to Colorado after graduating from law school in Virginia. Lots of low-level proximity action and beautiful scenery from the Colorado low lands south of Denver. Highlights include Daniels Park, Mount Herman in Monument, Castlewood Canyon, and the new Rueter-Hess Reservoir in Parker.

Just look at the complexity (and size/weight) of this mechanical gyro! Now that functionality (times nine--three gyros, three accelerometers, three magnetometers) is performed by a $15 chip smaller than your fingernail. 

From Hackaday:

When we posted our call for rocketry hacks and builds, we expected to see a few altitude sensors and maybe a GPS module or two. Apparently, we forgot similar hardware is very popular in the remote-controlled aircraft world, and can be successfully added to a rocket as [Kevin] and his ArduPilot equipped J motor rocketshowed us

The ArduPilot is a small Arduino comparable board designed for UAVs, quadcopters, and other whirligigs not powered by rocket motors. To get real-time telemetry from his rocket, [Kevin] attached a GPS receiver and an XBee transmitter. When launched on an H165 motor, [Kevin] was able to keep a radio lock on his rocket, allowing him to pull down data in real-time.

There are a few drawbacks to using the ArduPilot to collect flight data; the ArduPilot only reports ground speed, a somewhat useless feature if the vehicle is going straight up. Also, there is no way for [Kevin] to record data to an SD card; the ground team must be able to receive the XBee, lest bits of data go missing. For most rockets the radio issue shouldn’t be a problem. [Kevin] launched the same hardware on a J motor and was able to receive data from 3600 AGL.

From Hackaday:

After [Pyrofer] built a quadcopter, he purchased a cheap 6-channel transmitter made in China. Unfortunately, that transmitter was terrible so he took an old PS2 controller and built his own.

For his build, [Pyrofer] broke out the analog sticks and wired them to an AVR housed in the handle of the controller. The AVR sent commands to a 2.4 GHz radio transmitter powered by a small LiPo battery. With the addition of a few tact switches behind the shoulder buttons of the controller, [Pyrofer] has four axes of control with a few buttons for changing modes on his quadcopter.

This build really doesn’t hold a candle to some of the awesome DIY RC transmitters we’ve seen, but we’ve got to give [Pyrofer] credit for coming up with a very simple and easy build. Just about everyone has a PS2 or XBox controller lying around, and with a few extra hardware bits it’s easy to bodge up a decent remote control.

[Pyrofer] used a project called Funkenschlag to generate PPM signals, so if you feel the need to replicate this project send it in when you’re done.

I just wanted to share a mapping mission I ran last week with the E382 from Event 38 (my company) and processed with DroneMapper.com.

The reason these results are somewhat noteworthy is the amount of time it took to make this. I pulled up to the flying field, setup the plane in maybe 5 or 6 minutes. I hand launched the plane, flew around manually for exactly 5 minutes, taking 110 pictures in that time. Brought it in for a quick landing in some bushes then I packed up and went home. At home I uploaded the images straight to DroneMapper without even reviewing them. A few hours later, DM came back with really awesome results. All of this took just a few minutes of my time not counting the drive to and from the field.

My setup on the E382 is as follows: 

- Skywalker 168cm Airframe

- APM 2.0 with ArduPlane 2.4

- 3DR Telemetry Radios 915MHz

- Canon Powershot SX230 HS with CHDK

The camera is really what made this so quick.. with built in GPS all the images are geotagged automatically as they're taken. This mission was actually done to see if it could keep a GPS lock for the entire flight which it did. Having the images geotagged and processing them with DroneMapper returns files that can be analyzed (as in the image above) for things like the elevation profile of any path, the length of a path, the area of a field and so on. There are nice tutorials on how to get started with that in the DroneMapper FAQ.

Measuring the length of a trail

Measuring the area of low lying vegetation

Extracting the coordinates of a point of interest

Due to my poor Flying skills, I had to search for a way to reduce the damage due to hard landing. This is what I come up with and it works well. However at times it is too bouncy.

I also face a problem with the suggested 150mm legs for the camera mount. The length seems to be only slightly longer than the camera mount. However in the Official page the distance between the camera gimbal and ground seems more. Not sure if I missed something here :(