Blogs

This weeks' Robots Podcast has a great interview with Alan Winfield, co-founder of the Bristol Robotics Lab. Although it's not about UAVs, per se, it is about the challenges in swarming robotics. He makes some excellent points:

--There are no real swarming robotic deployments in the world outside of lab simulations.

--One of the problems with designing swarming strategies is that in the absence of natural evolution and selection pressure, we can't measure how "good" they are.

--My favorite line: "There are no robot ethics. Only ethical roboticists." Like him, I've always thought that Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics were silly. Robots aren't people and can't have ethics. Robticists can.

"These aerial images of White Sands National Monument [top] and Glen Canyon Dam [left] were taken by a Canon SD30 carried on a radio-controlled model airplane [right], using CHDK to operate the shutter."

IEEE Spectrum magazine on the great CHDK software, which allows you to control Canon cameras remotely. The whole piece is long and interesting, so read it all, but here's a bit about what CHDK is:

"The CHDK firmware resides on the camera's memory card, but the original Canon firmware remains on the camera's internal flash memory. So you're not likely to "brick" your camera by using CHDK inappropriately. Indeed, you can return your camera to its stock configuration merely by restarting it without CHDK on its memory card or by switching the locking tab on the card to its unlocked position. (CHDK loads only if the card is locked, and once this firmware is loaded, the camera can still record images.) The CHDK firmware is described fully on the wiki athttp://www.chdk.wikia.com, which includes a "CHDK for Dummies" section and plenty of pointers for getting up and running."

(via Adafruit)

The AMA is claiming that the FAA has "forced" them to become the "manager" of recreational aviation that will force every recreational sUAV user to be a member of the AMA or not be able to fly.

From one of the AMA's "ARC" FAQs:

"AMA would prefer to see a single set of guidelines managed by a community-based organization

that establishes the standards for all of model aviation. AMA is actively developing a

comprehensive set of model aviation guidelines from its current safety standards for submittal to

the FAA and hopefully acceptance and approval before the sUAS SFAR becomes a reality in

2011.

This may sound to some like the Academy is trying to force all modelers to join the AMA.

Certainly AMA believes there is strength in numbers and the health and welfare of the hobby

undoubtedly depends upon the presence of a strong national organization that can speak for and

advocate the interests of the aeromodeling community. But, forcing modelers to join the AMA is

by no means the intent of the Academy’s approach to the sUAS rulemaking. AMA’s sole aim is

to work through this issue that has been somewhat forced upon us, and achieve an end result that

allows the modelers to continue to enjoy the hobby in much the same way as they have in the

past"

Seems like a sneaky way to bolster their falling membership by millions. The AMA has no oversight policy for its members or clubs and its safety policies are based soley on what an insurance company will allow. Let us hope that the AMA will be ignored by the FAA. A set of atandards for everyone to follow instead of forcing everyone to get an AMA insurance policy is what is needed.

power supply and esc

first test frame

test set up

motor with 2 layers of rubber fore damping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjRsPxao5Xk

test

lot`s of work to be dan.

i made an plexiglas top plate so i can see the led`s.

camera mount.

frst test fit

I've updated the APM Beta code (zip file version) to roll up our latest bug fixes and tweaks. The most noticeable one is that we've moved back to the excellent circle algorithm that we had in ArduPilot2.7 (we were experimenting with a different approach with APM, but the ArduPilot one turned out to work better in the real world). You can see some results from one of my flights yesterday above (using a SuperStar--moderate wind).

Overall it's flying very well and has been tested on a large and growing number of aircraft. It almost invariably works right out of the box with the default gains. All you should need to do is change the DIP switches to get your servo directions right and use elevon mixing if that what you need.

This is the last beta update. We expect to release the 1.0 code (not beta) this time next week. As always, you can follow the progress here. As you can see from that activity tracker, the APM Dev Team has been busy.

Hi, I'm wondering if there's a way to obtain AoA and sideslip angle information from GPS speed data? There is vertical speed and 3d speed so this would probably be able to give me an estimate of the angle of attack, but for sideslip, I would have to have the y-component of the speed. Is there a way to get this from GPS or the IMU unit?

I have also tried it for one whole day but am at a loss of how to get the information to be passed from ArduIMU V2+ to ArduPilot so that I can use XBee to transmit it wirelessly to my GCS. Any clues from any good samaritans out there?

Otherwise, I think I am left with integrating acceleration information from the IMU which will probably be susceptible to a lot of errors, and also since it depends on the 'initial conditions' the errors will accumulate continuously.. :( Any ideas on whether this is a feasible option at all?

Here's what I'm flying with ArduPilotMega:

--EasyStar (default settings work fine)

--SuperStar EP (default settings work fine):

--Skyfun (default settings work fine)











--Skywalker (picture at top)