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Interesting Micro-UAVs

Posted by Christian Veyssiere on January 15, 2010 at 12:17am
Hi all,I'm a new members interesting by Micro-UAV since many years.If some ideas could interesting somebody, on my website, you could find some reports (made by me and my wife) of M-UAV contest from 2002 to 2008.For example :2007 at Toulouse (France)

2008 at Agra (India)

Actually, I'm working on FPV models and review of equipment.Yesterday, I have pilot the new Drone AR Parrot. Parrot society is in Paris and it was a fantastic experience.

12515-parrotardrone06.jpg

You could see pictures and video in a few time on the web site of this magazineByeChristian
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Introduction

Posted by Matt Johnston on January 14, 2010 at 7:44pm
Hi all,I'm a contracting WAN (large computer network) architect/engineer, and an embedded systems engineer (microprocessor-based stuff mainly, with most experience in netbook and mobile style applications). Before that I was a programmer, focusing on networked applications, and also did a while of AI development.I've been given a part-time funded project of the design of a mid-sized UAV (several to be built), for monitoring and on-demand surveillance of a medium sized property. Under the contract I have, I own all rights to the design, so I decided I'd share what I learn and develop with others.The planned UAV is a mid-sized quad-rotor helicopter, 500mm between rotor center and airframe center, with 200mm blades (for a 400mm rotor). These exact details may change however, and I'll try to keep this blog updated with progress and such.I'll be developing almost everything in-house, including the airframe, avionics, protocols, and ground station equipment. I'll be using pre-designed ICs, motors, and batteries (among other things) for obvious reasons. I'll be manufacturing a lot of the parts and assembly myself.The system is to be fully automated, and will be controlled via a base station server, with a small comms tower. The UAVs will contain mesh networking links, to allow either relayed communications with the base, or basic AI intelligence when they are outside of base range, by direct communication.I'll be posting to update on the sort of things I'm up to, and with more design and implementation details as they come up. I'll hope to follow this post soon with more information on how the system operates.Anyway, looks like a fun site, filled with a lot of knowledgeable people. I think I'm definitely going to enjoy my time here :)-Matt
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Developer

Ardupilot 2.5 Beta

Posted by Jason Short on January 14, 2010 at 5:00pm
This is a quick note to let everyone know that Ardupilot 2.5 is feature complete and can be downloaded via SVN. If you're on Windows, use TourtiseSVN and if you're on a OS X like me, try Versions. The code is located here.Once the Beta feedback is in I'll post a zip file of the final version. Information about using SVN can be found on the web. Please post any issues in this blog post, and I'll fix them immediately and re-upload.I'm also building a wiki manual to help with the configuration, but it's an early work in progress. I'll write a lot more this week, but there should be enough content up there to get you going.Use the Airframe tester to configure your new 2.5 header file and familiarize yourself with the startup sequence. Don't use the old 2.4 file, except to copy over your old gain settings. I've tried to keep as many of the values the same, but many values are new as well.By Default the control switch settings are 1 - manual, 2 - Autopilot, 3 - Stabilize. Feel free to change them to whatever you like.Good luck,Jasonp.s. Who thinks Ardupilot needs a logo?
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T3

GPS sats in view: quality does matter.

Posted by Krzysztof Bosak on January 14, 2010 at 2:00pm
Recently a flight in Norway revealed and interesting truth about GPS number of satellites in view: quantity is not quality. The photomission for T3-4 contest ended well, but the message is clear: checking wind is one thing, checking GPS availability is another.

T3-4 Photocontest using EasyUAV from brakar on Vimeo.

This thread explains things:http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?p=14059833#post14059833Compare how few satellites over the horison can fool navigating plane.

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3D Robotics

DIY Drones on Twitter

Posted by Chris Anderson on January 14, 2010 at 9:20am
DIY Drones is now fully Twitter-enabled! All blog posts are automatically tweeted on @DIYDrones, so please follow us there. Also, you can tweet any blog post or discussion forum post to your own Twitter account by clicking on the Twitter icon below it (circled below).

Finally, you can set your status update message on your MyPage to also post to your own Twitter account by checking the box shown below:

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3D Robotics

New site to buy AttoPilot and other UAV equipment--a work in progress

Posted by Chris Anderson on January 13, 2010 at 2:00pm

We love and worship AttoPilot, Dean Geodde and the smart team around him, but we're just thankful that they're better at UAVs than they are at the Web. The original attopilot.com website was a bit of a Flash disaster with a pdf order form and then was never updated. Now the site is down in the worst way: it's been showing a Godaddy landing page for the past couple weeks while Dean revamps the site (Dean, please! An "under construction" page is not that hard to put up!).

Fortunately, Chris McNair has taken on the web storefront role with a new site at http://www.emtechnologiesgroup.com/. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a Flash disaster, too. There are no links on the front page that will actually take you to any products, and the closest thing, "Product Brochure", weirdly gives you this:

However, if you click around enough you'll eventually find a "Purchase Here" link at the bottom of the page and that will take you to the storefront shown at the top of this page. It's all clearly a work in progress, and many of the images are missing or of the wrong thing (love the "Our Team" shot of clipart diversity!), so we can assume it will get better soon. Over at the Attopilot user group, Chris has asked for feedback and constructive criticism, so for starters may I suggest: 1) Kill the Flash. It's 2010--we all learned our lesson about Flash-based sites last decade. Just say no! 2) Put the product link on the home page 3) Put a redirect on attopilot.com or at least a page informing people that the company is still in business and to stay tuned for a new website. 4) Add community of some sort. Even a forum or discussion group would be better than nothing.
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Developer

Ublox operating, but won't get a fix - driving me crazy

Posted by Doug Weibel on January 13, 2010 at 11:39am
1 of my 2 Ublox modules has developed a problem. It refuses to get a fix. I am monitoring it with Ucenter and see that it is operating, it is tracking 7 or 8 satellited from inside my house, but it won't get a fix. I notice that it is getting the correct UTC time, but it cannot tell the date! I assume this is why it can't solve for a fix. I have reset the configuration and performed several cold starts. Not sure what else to try??? Any suggestions?
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It seems this is the quadrocopter week , another tricopter is name Shrediquette.

Posted by Oguz Dogansoy on January 13, 2010 at 11:35am
Web page ishttp://shrediquette.blogspot.com/And videoshttp://vimeo.com/6766174http://vimeo.com/7420635Back motor tilt by servo and looks very stable and also good 3d capable.You can find in construction and setup manual , detail the tail mechanism. I start to build this tricopter , but hard to find i2c driven esc's and expensive German made.Oguz Dogansoy
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Video of Houston Police secret aerial drones

Posted by Toby on January 13, 2010 at 2:46am
Not sure about the reporting style.http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/12/video-of-houston-pol.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29Public safety application include:• Mobility• Evacuation• Home land security• Search and rescue• TacticalAre the above applications listed in order of priority?

I wish I had a ground station like this.

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3D Robotics

Parrot AR.Drone unpacking

Posted by Chris Anderson on January 12, 2010 at 10:30pm

Super excited...the Parrot team sent me two AR.Drones as development kits! (One is for me and the other for a famous game designer friend). They just arrived, and here are some first impressions and closeups. First, I haven't flown it at home yet because you've got to compile the source code with the iPhone SDK and then load it in ad-hoc distribution mode, and I'm not a iPhone developer (yet). But I did get to fly it at CES and it was just as awesome as you've heard. The coolest thing is that when you get in trouble you just take your finger off the iPhone screen and it snaps into hover mode exactly where it is and just stays there, totally locked. Amazing... Here are some photos from the unboxing (these photos are all on Flickr, where you can mouse over them for notes. Just click on the photo and you'll be taken there): IMG_4658 This is the main board, with the Arm9 core in custom Parrot DSP silicon, the downward-facing camera for optical flow, the ultrasonic sensor and the WiFi radio. IMG_4657 This is a closeup of one of the brushless motors and ESC (the quad comes in either brushed or brushless models). This ESC runs at 200Hz. IMG_4660 It comes with a 1000mAh LiPo and charger. IMG_4661 You can see the carbon fiber rods through the battery compartment IMG_4659 Green LEDs in the front; red LEDs in the back IMG_4662 A USB-to-serial cable for hardware interfacing
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Developer

ArduIMU Quadcopter

Posted by Jose Julio on January 12, 2010 at 2:28pm
Is this the quadrotor week? :-)Hi all, on Christmas holidays I have started my DIY project to construct a cheap (but good performance) quadcopter based on ArduIMU hardware only.

I have used standard props (NO counter rotating) that are easy to get and if we want construct the quad on other size you have no problems finding the right prop. To compensate for torque I mount front and rear motor with a small angle (about 6º, see Photos). I first use this concept on this project (http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=297067) six years ago!!...Size: 64cm (motor to motor). We can dissasembly front and rear arms with one screw (easy transport)Weigth: 850gComponents:4x TowerPro2410-9T+ESC18A+Prop1047 combo 4x$15 = $603S2200 Lipo Batt = $13Aluminium and building materials = $12ArduIMU = $99--------------Full: $185

Note how small seems the ArduIMU PCB on this quad! and how clean is this setup. We can construct really tiny quads this way and if we use standard props we have a wide range of motors and props to choose...Development:The first test I did on this project was the vibration test of the ArduIMU with motors running and with the new firmware (I use r20) there are no problems with this. Because we have 4 motors running there are more noise on accelerometers (it´s normal) so I added a new low pass filter on the accels and also adjust the gains for drift corrections...The main loop with IMU code and PID controls for roll, pitch and yaw runs at 70Hz and the PWM outputs for ESC´s have a 125Hz rate. As always, adjust the PID gains is a very important task . D term is really important for a quad and I am using directly the raw gyro readings (bias corrected) to feed the D term in order to make it more responsive.The most difficult part was the developing of the function to generate the PWM pulses for the ESC´s because we need 4 PWM servo outputs with very good precision (1-2us) and at a high rate (now is 125Hz).This code generate more than 10,000 interrupts per second (only ADC generates more than 8,800) so in this enviroment is difficult to generate precise pulses.The solution was to use the Timer2 overflow interrupt and a "trick" based on Timer 1 counter readings to achieve this high precision. I have also one (or two) more standard servo output for future applications (camera stabilization?)The radio input is done via the ICP pin and interrupts so high precision is achieved (1us). We need to feed a PPM signal (directly from Rx or via the new Jordi´s PPM encoder...)On the future we can use the magnetometer of ArduIMU, but now the yaw is like having a Heading hold gyro (note that quads have slower yaw response than helis)This is the first stage on the development process of this project but I have made some tests with good results.

Future:-More tests, outdoor tests...-Add ArduIMU magnetometer to correct yaw drift-Add GPS for position control...-Add Ultrasonic rangefinger for automatic take-off / landing...-Add camera with stabilization...-Find time to all this projects... :-)Here is the code and some notes: Quad1_15.zipSome link to photos: Photo1,Photo2,Photo3,Photo4Jose Julio.
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Snellflight 'jumpjet' quadrotor

Posted by Pig Pilot on January 12, 2010 at 11:54am
To add to the subject of quadrotors, there has been a very inexpensive item available here in the UK for the last couple of years. It's called the 'jumpjet' due to it being supplied with a stealth bomber body and this was later augmented with a 'Harrier Jump Jet' body as an accessory. The basic model is about £60 in the UK which roughly equates to about 100 USD. The model is for indoor use as it comes out of the box and can be converted to radio control by and add-on circuit. The basic quadrotor model can be readily flown without the aircraft bodies being fitted.This item was designed in the UK by 'Snellflight' who are a small model design business noted for innovative helicopter designs. The parts are made in China.Here is the website; http://www.snelflight.co.uk/index.htmThere are several videos on the site including an outside flight carrying a video camera and transmitter.
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3D Robotics

Another toy quadcopter from CES, begging to be made autonomous

Posted by Chris Anderson on January 12, 2010 at 9:08am

The Parrot AR.Drone was not the only quadcopter at CES. From ArsTechnica, a report on a toy quad with impressive-sounding specs ($299 show price; $399 MSRP). Gyro stabilization and some sort of altitude control (ultrasound). Sounds like it will quickly be sued into extinction by Lucas, but the trend here is clear. The era of cheap and capable quads is upon us. We'll be modding these things for full autonomy and good cameras in no time. What does this mean for the expensive (multi thousand $s) quadcopters from the semi-pro world, such as the Draganfly and Mikrocopter? I know they're more capable, but is it enough to justify the price difference?
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