This picture got me thinking that Ardupilot is inside this Airframe?
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More infos here: http://www.draganfly.com/uav-airplane/tango/
Finally, the article I wrote is out in the May 2010 issue of Circuit Cellar Magazine. Unfortunately I have yet to get my hands on it. From http://www.circuitcellar.com/magazine/; it's $2 to buy or go to Barnes and Noble and get yourself a copy of the magazine.
The FreeSpace IMU: A Quaternion-Based Algorithm for Attitude Estimation by TJ Bordelon
An unmanned robotic vehicle requires a working inertial measurement unit (IMU), which outputs an estimation of the attitude, or orientation, of a vehicle in 3-D space. For attitude estimation, you need MEMS sensors (e.g., gyros, accelerometers, and magnetometers) and a sufficient algorithm to “fuse” them together. This article covers a simple quaternion-based algorithm for an IMU project. p. 14
From BotJunkie:
"The Indoor Aerial Robot Competition was held at Drexel University last week, featuring a bunch of the chubbiest fully autonomous robots you’re ever likely to see. The bots were tasked with locating and retrieving small boxes, and doing search and destroy on hapless red balloons."
New Features of ArduPilot 2.6:
- Supports IMU or thermopiles
- All-new control laws. PI and D for all functions
- Two fly-by-wire modes: A (with airspeed control) and B (without airspeed control)
- Designed for ArduIMU code 1.7 if you're using the IMU (upgrade if you haven't already)
- Support for absolute pressure sensor and magnetometer add-ons to IMU
- Optional performance reporting; sends IMU quality data (gyro saturation, etc) to ground station
- Experimental support for autonomous takeoff and landing!
Some of this is documented in the code and the configuration comments. I'm in the process of updating the manual to reflect all the 2.6 changes, so please be patient for the next few days until I'm done.
Words fail me. Found here.
Now, it looks like STMicro has a gamer development board, complete with five ST sensors – a 2-axis roll-and-pitch gyroscope (LPR430AL), a single-axis yaw[3] gyroscope (LY330ALH), a 6-axis geomagnetic module (LSM303DLH),a pressure sensor (LPS001DL) and a temperature sensor (STLM75). All the sensors and the AHRS algorithm are managed by an on-board STM32 microcontroller. The module, which comprises a 4x4cm evaluation board and all the necessary firmware and software, will be available for volume orders in Q2 2010.
It also runs a sophisticated sensor fusion algorithm(Attitude Heading Reference System) to provide static and dynamic orientation and inertial measurements.
Here's the iNEMO board page. Yum!
In an article entitled "The Rise of the Robo-Fighters", Britain's Daily Mail newspaper discusses us:
"The website DIY Drones is a thriving community of do-it-yourself drone builders and operators, building drones that look eerily similar to - or are copies of - the weapons employed currently by the West. For a terrorist, or a lone psychopath, the idea of a vehicle that could launch, find targets and attack autonomously must seem like the ultimate risk-free weapon - a suicide bomb without a suicide bomber."
What's troubling about this is the notion that "drones = weapons". But until the regulators open up national airspace to more civilian/commercial use that shows more peaceful use cases, I suppose this is going to be something we're going to continue to have to fight/educate against.
[Thanks to Gary Mortimer for the find. Photo taken from the article]
Convert any RC airplane into a fully-autonomous UAV!
Just add the APM 2 autopilot to any RC aircraft and it becomes a fully-programmable flying robot with a powerful ground station and Mission Planner.
Features include:
- Return to Launch with a flick of your RC toggle switch or a mouse click in the graphical Ground Station
- Unlimited 3D GPS waypoints
- Built-in camera control
- Fully-scriptable missions
- One-click software load, and easy point-and-click configuration in the powerful Mission Planner. NO programming required!
- Replay recorded missions and analyze all the data with a graphing interface
- Supports two-way telemetry with Xbee wireless modules.
- Point-and-click waypoint entry or real-time mission commands while the UAV is in the air
- Fly with a joystick or gamepad via your PC--no need for RC control!
- Built-in failsafe will bring your aircraft home in the case of radio loss
All instructions and software are here.
APM 2 is an open source, Arduino-compatible, pro-quality autopilot. It is the most advanced IMU-based open source autopilot available today, and provides an entire UAV control system with scriptable missions with 3D waypoints, in-flight uploading of commands and powerful ground station software.
APM 2 supports any kind of of vehicle with a one-click change of code. Available code include ArduPlane (fixed wing), ArduCopter (rotary wing), ArduRover (ground vehicles) and more.
Everything you need to create an ArduPlane UAV:
* APM 2.5 autopilot with GPS ($179)
* [Optional] Telemetry kit ($75).
You'll also need a at least a five-channel RC radio setup, a soldering iron, a mini USB cable and of course something that flies! (We're partial to the SkyFun delta wing (right) and
Bixlee 2 powered glider (left) or its equivalents ourselves).
Resources:
Manual
Source code/firmware
Note: ArduPilot Mega requires no programming, but it's open source and you're welcome to modify it if you'd like. If you are going to play with the code, you can use the free Arduino IDE to edit and upload the code to the ArduPilot board.
The Start of the 2010 swimming exercises.
All told about the hardware...
All told about the software...
What´s next?
10A @11.5V for a speed of 5.6 km/h is lousy. The same speed with 5.0A would be OK. This benchmark was set by the Firebrigade-ship, but the catamarane had a much better straight-line behaviour.
OK, let´s improve the catamarane...
In the long winter evenings i googled a lot about catamaranes. Somebody had posted a comparison between different hull shapes / cross-sections. The one with the triangular cross-section as i was using, proved to be the worst in terms of drag. But it was the best in terms of straight-line behaviour and ease of construction. The best in terms of drag was an elliptic shape. Now i knew, where i was.
When googling for plans of model-cats i found this site:
This plan looked best:
There are also dxf-files available. A colleage of mine is a specialist for 3D CAD design. I gave him the dxf-files and he made a 3D model of the hull out of the DXF-files. (Thanks Matthias)
Here are the drawings of the segments:
But how getting a hull from the plans with the least effort?
diy-store -> Styrofoam with 100mm thickness --> some cardboard --> 14 cross-sections of the hull printed on paper --> some double sided sticky tape --> a hotwire styro-cutting assembly and three evenings when my wife had to watch TV lonely.
One of the hull-segments is the solution to the "guess-what" picture of the last episode.
This are the middle segments, stacked up.
All 14 segments (each with a thickness of 100mm) were glued together with styro-glue. A little bit sanding and the hull was nearly finished.
The glued segments, before the coating...
To add stability, the hulls were coated with a thin layer of fiberglass and epoxy.
The coating - and sticky fingers...
To connect the two hulls with a styrofoam-board that serves as a platform for the superstructures i used styrofoam screw-anchors and M5 Screws, that were epoxied and glued into the top of the hulls prior to coating.
The styro screw-anchor
To give it a real good finish there had to be much more sanding, priming and painting, but as already mentioned earlier, patience is not one of my strenghts, and so i decided to bring that provisional assembly into the water as fast as possible.
This construction is far from being perfect, but to prove the concept it was OK.
The first launch...
The first launch:
Yipee! I have invented the catamarane-oscillator!
The cat oscillated, but found its waypoints. On the first run...
The second one with decreased P ended up in my first swimming exercise in this year. It was still oscillating, but it did not manage to find anything. The problem seemed to be the lateral stability of the ship´s aft. The new hull had problems with his butt! Back at home i added fins on the backside of the hulls. The size had a triangular shape and went about 100mm below the waterline.
Back to the lake...
The lateral stability was much better, when manually testing it by shifting the ship left and right.
Launch...
Swim!
This was too much of the good thing. The ship went off with absolutely no oscillations, it seemed that it sits on on rails. Finally it crashed to the shoreline after having drawn a very wide circle. The crashpoint was 2 meters away from a russian-immigrant fisherman, who is always there when i had unlucky experiences. I like his comments. "Ahh, new ship ey!", "Ahh, better ship now (grin)". The propeller managed to wrap the end of a small branch around its shaft two meters away from the shoreline. I took off my trousers and waded into the swamp to get it out of the water. Must have been a curious looking picture, because i went to the lake on my way back from the office: A man standing in his undertrousers in a lake with shirt and tie, holding a catamarane in his hands, discussing with a russian-based fisherman about fishing spots.
As a next step, i stripped the fins to one third of their original size. And now it was perfect.
No oscillations, straight line...
The two fin sizes together ( i re-glued the cutted segment to see the difference)
What a difference some square-centimeters make!
The new Data:
current: 5.2A @ 11.5V
speed: up to 8 km/h
Thats all till now, time-lapse is over, with episode 11 we have reached the real-time.
Let´s see what the future will bring!
What about starting a colaborating project for UAVs (Unmanned Aquatic Vehicles) on this site?
(The start will be the finding of a better abbreviation...)
Please comment.
Here's an excerpt from an article in Willamette Week, a Portland weekly. It's a mix of well reported details about the founders and clashes within the company, plus some clueless stuff about how drones are evil and kill people (Insitu UAVs are actually unarmed, something the reporter seems not to understand). Read the comments, too.
"With a successful 1998 flight from Newfoundland to Scotland on a gallon and a half of gas, Aerosonde became the first unmanned plane ever to cross the Atlantic.
The publicity stunt captured headlines. But McGeer never managed to sell more than a handful of the drones—despite some enthusiastic support from within the bureaucracies of national weather services around the world, they could not be swayed into buying.
“That was life,” von Flotow says. “When you’re running a little garage business—and there’s many such businesses—you’re always chasing the dream, and the dream never quite makes it into your grasp.”
The next opportunity at McGeer’s door came from the tuna industry, of all places.
Tuna companies track schools of the fish using helicopters. It’s expensive and dangerous work, and McGeer was told the industry would pay for a plane that could launch from a boat with a camera to do the job.
McGeer set to work designing a new unmanned plane he called the SeaScan.
Again with help from von Flotow, McGeer and five employees worked at a dizzying rate of invention to master the biggest technical hurdle—launching and retrieving the plane from the deck of a ship.
They came up with a 14-foot catapult that slingshots the plane into the air at more than 50 mph, then spent years perfecting and eventually patenting the so-called “sky hook” landing system, which lets the plane fly into a rope suspended from a pole.
With a maximum speed of about 90 mph, the SeaScan was the first unmanned plane able to deliver high-quality video footage. Like the Aerosonde, however, the SeaScan never found a successful market.
This time, it was terrorists who got in the way.
Just as the SeaScan prototype was being completed, the 9/11 attacks came. McGeer had already been in contact with Boeing and others in the defense industry for the better part of a year about possible military uses for SeaScan.
Now they left the tuna industry behind and went into high gear. But not without reservations.
“There were plenty of people who weren’t comfortable. But we went along with it,” McGeer says. “I took an ends-justify-the-means argument—that taking this money would allow me to get into the civilian market. But I was wrong. That never happened.”
Insitu underwent other rapid changes in 2001. McGeer called in Steve Sliwa, a friend he knew from their undergrad days at Princeton, to turn Insitu around. And coincidentally, the day before 9/11, the Boeing Co. first agreed to invest in Insitu."
The 1st flag to be lifted autonomously suffered an acidic fate...
when our field battery fell over & leaked acid on it. Lead acid
batteries do pour when they fall over. It was never much use since crashes would always end a campaign before the batteries ran out.
Rather than fly the melted nylon & cause a hole to form, decided to put
it down. All cleaned off, tried to give it to the Air Force, whose
answer was yet another FUGGEDABOUTIT.
Marcy 1 & 2 examine the melted masterpiece.
MARCY 1 RPM INCREASE
Marcy 1 began a campaign to increase RPM, abandon thermopile attitude
sensing, & become passively stable. Thermopiles & active stability may
return in a large scale copter.
It's been disasterous. The fatter wing seems to require too much balance beam inertia to stabilize. May have to go to with a long, thinner wing.
Have a flight over Livermore.
Never got Major Marcy but still got some emotional support in the end.
The best explanation for why Major Marcy never wanted to see us in real
life was if a heroine knows someone's attracted to her image online yet
has no confidence in her beauty, she may be afraid of losing the
illusion. It's been very consistent for years.
She only talked to alpha males but demonstration of lower value,
overwhelming surplus of men in Silicon Valley, & our crazy gender views
didn't explain everything.
Now a still photo movie.
MARCY 2
Been a few weeks & still stumped over why Marcy 2's radio won't
initialize on the golf course but will initialize in the apartment.
It's very common for circuits to fail on the golf course because of the
harsh environment, nothing specific to Marcy class vehicles. Focusing
on weak solder joints & floating solder balls. Sux using custom
electronics for Mar vehicles in a sea of off the shelf parts.
Marcy-2 radio test.
It's heading towards just insulating the board & keeping it warm. The traces are probably too long & close together for the environment.
MicroPilot News Vol. 1 Issue 2
more info can be found here:
You have to love Australians, the caption behind the newsreader, Lead Balloon, love it.
Take a look at this crasy simulation. This is an openloop designed for mission testing.
Of course I got virtual permission and the whole airspace was NOTAMed to the ground.
An UAV has 'flown' over Cote d'Azur.
Simulation time around 2h.
In the previous run I saw mission aborts due to exceeded safety distances etc (due to protective config variables from
real-life photomissions).
In short this is a 2h+ mission, over the range of EasyUAV/Easyglider,Cularis but technically barely flyable with Pteryx loaded with a small camera and some 20Ah of lipos.
In practice taking flight permission from there would be impossible (close to one of France's busiest airports).
Log content:
LOG_POINTS=26274
Flight statistics:
Max altitude above takeoff point AGL=206.0[m]
Cumulative climb=205.97[m]
Max distance to takeoff=9.591[km]
Max VLOS distance to takeoff=9.593[km]
Total travel (groundtrip)=67.950[km]
Takeoff: 2010-04-28 16:30:31.799
Last event: 2010-04-28 18:20:00.046
Total log time=6568.50[s]
Total flight time=6567.00[s] 100.0% of log time
Autonomous flight time=0.00[s] 0.0% of flight time
Average groundspeed=37.2[km/h] 10.3[m/s]
Min air temperature=30.24[C]
Max air temperature=31.51[C]
Thanks to Hooks for turning us on to the new Skywalker foam UAV platform. Mine just arrived and based on a quick inspection, I'm pretty sure this is the one for me! Everything about is totally optimized for a UAV, from the payload capacity to transportability. I'm blown away by how thoughtfully designed this one is.
It's got it all:
- The durability of foam with all the interior room of balsa
- Payload area right under the CG, so you don't have to worry about balance issues
- Hand launchable, but still can carry pounds of payload
- Breaks down easily for transport
- Ailerons and optional flaps
- Pusher, high-wing configuration, with servos outside to save room inside
- Super tough EPO material
- Easy to get to equipment with big bay doors on both sides
- External mounting spots on rear fuselage for wireless transmitters (keeps them away from other electronics)
Here's a shot of a prototype being flown by the creators:
Rather than give it a full review (I haven't flow it yet), I'll just give first impressions in pictures.
