Jose Juilo from the ArduCopter team has been doing great work adding the GPS position hold and autopan features to the code. Yesterday you saw the video of the flight; here's the picture that the quad took, a stitch of 8 photos taken with a programmed slow yaw movement linked to shutter triggers.
Full GPS navigation is the next feature ArduCopter will inherit from the ArduPilot Mega code. Expect a public beta within the month....
First bumpy, but successful landing in X-plane with Erlang autopilot from Benjamin Nortier on Vimeo.
There's a long and good profile in the LA Times of the UAV industry in San Diego (General Atomics) and Los Angeles (AeroEnvironment), which now employs an estimated 10,000 people. Read it here.
Classic New York Post: (via Gawker)
"Attack of the Drones
Airborne Eyes Peer at the City
In New York City, someone's always looking down on you.
Low-tech, miniature versions of battlefield drones have come to the boroughs. Only here, they are controlled mostly by hobbyists and photographers, not soldiers shooting insurgents from the sky.
There are only 282 official permits to fly drones nationwide, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. They range from $4.5 million jets that can fly for two days without landing, to hand-launched helicopters that fit in a book bag.
The FAA would not say if any of these permits have been issued in New York City.
But the number of drones patrolling the nation's skies is expected to "explode" if the agency, as expected in December, relaxes restrictions on law enforcement for aircraft weighing 4.4 pounds or less.
Until then, hobbyists are the only people who can launch unmanned aircraft without a permit, as long as devices aren't being used to make money, said an FAA spokesman. They're supposed to fly below 400 feet."
more here....
Waiting for my new copter legs I decided to see how the Jani copter could be adapted. The frame fits very well on the Gaui. I still have parts to add to the top but it works. I tried larger motors and 10" props but I need to raise two of the motors for this to work. So the picture shows the standard 10a esc and Gaui motors
Sonar and IR to follow. I liked the esc calibration of the Gaui so I have implemented this in my ardu copter code. This means the copter will not start if you have never calibrated the esc's and after that will not start if throttle is not in the lowest position.
Next job automatic PID adjustment!
For those interested ther engine mounts and baseplate were constructed using a rapid prototyper and are made out of ABS plastic which is quite strong.
Cheers,
Tried APC propellers again. Propeller struck ground but didn't bend. Motor broke off mount & propeller struck ESC, damaging something. ESC started smoking. Fortunately we test fly on the golf course instead of a dry field. It's been a long time of occupied storage, but now it's time to trash the APC's.
Finally got operational with the fulltime orientation hold. Next, the helical antenna finally got its show.
It certainly doesn't get as many satellites as the patch. It hasn't had any sudden glitches yet, either. It has a lot more of a random walk & seems to lag more.
The main difference with fulltime orientation hold is the lower D gains possible. That reduces the amount of oscillating. The human controlled cyclic needed such high D gains it always oscillated. The only option for full cyclic was different gains when in full autopilot.
We're not entirely crazy about fulltime orientation hold any more than basic cyclic. Now there's a very narrow limit to angle of attack because our accelerometer only does right side up. It needs a bit of margin to keep from going over 90' & flipping.
Teaser now up on the Arduino home page. Whatever could they be planning? ;-)
Michael Oborne's awesome point-and-click APM mission planner now includes an APM cofiguration GUI. Nice!
The code is evolving quickly, so get it from the SVN repository for now. [UPDATE: it's in the download section as a zip now]
I don't know how long of a distance it takes for most of you to land, but when diving in below the treeline from 200 feet I pick up tremendousspeed on my EasyStar to the point of hitting 50 mph and overshootingthe runway, ending up in the trees.
Of course I can land in 500 feet easy, but making my autopilot do it wasnot. I was curious if anyone wanted to chime in on how they solvedtheir landing issues and minimizing the length of space required.
I was able to get mine down to 500 feet diving in from 200 feet and leveling off. The attached photo is my landing pattern.
1) Circle the landing zone, sample the winds
2) Go downwind
3) Turn for final approach
4) DIVE! with a feedback loop on airspeed able to do reverse thrust
5) flare and land.
My reverse thrust is done with a car speed controller. I can get +1 lbthrust as well as -1 lb of thrust. (Wasn't expecting that either.) Thisis just by running a typical 5x5 prop backwards!
The end result is that I slow down from 50 mph to 20 mph in a few seconds after the dive.
AttoPilot International has a sweet deal for current AttoPilot 1.8 owners: just $300 to upgrade to 2.0. Why do it? Well, just look at this picture. That's some pretty amazing miniaturization! Smaller even than ArduPilot without its shield. Plus the AttoPilot folks upgraded my 1.8 unit to 2.0 software (actually, they did even better--they replaced it with new hardware because it was broken), so now I essentially have two 2.0 units. Best customer service ever!
The growth here is accelerating. We're now adding 1,000 members every 8 weeks and hit 11,000 today. On an average day, this site does between 25,000 and 30,000 page views. We're closing in on 1 million page views per month.
I had lunch today with the executive team of Ning, the social networking platform we're based on. Features coming out over the next several weeks include:
“We were watching this very closely,” said Winnefeld, head of US Northern Command and NORAD, the joint US-Canadian air defense command.
“It’s headed right for the heart of the national capital region,” he told defense reporters. “Do you let it run out of gas and hopefully crash in a farmer’s field or do you actually take action to shoot it down?”
“You certainly don’t want to shoot it down over a populated area if you can avoid it.”
The North American Aerospace Defense Command was on the verge of scrambling F-16 fighter jets to intercept the helicopter when operators regained control of the chopper after 20 minutes.
I finally went with a Trex 600 ESP, stretched it to a 700e and mounted a canon 50D.
thanks
Matt
Our long national nightmare is over: The ArduPilot Mega main board is back in stock. Sparkfun has 164 on hand, and more will be built as these go. The IMU shield is also in stock at the DIY Drones store, as are both the MediaTek and uBlox GPS modules. So basically everything you need is now available.
The code is in good shape in Alpha release (SVN only) and is being flown regularily. It will be released in public Beta (zip file) for less expert users by the end of Sept. The ArduCopter branch is also flying well, and should be ready for the commercial release of the full ArduCopter kit in about a month.
