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So the desk was clean but it's not anymore! I have started the building of the wings, and the construction is going good here are a couple of pictures, and more will be following shorly, especially when we get to the details in the sweep mechanics, and wing braces and supports.And for the electronic guru's - schematics are just about to be sent to the Fab house! this is going to be a awesome board.
What is an amateur UAV?
An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that has the capability of autonomous flight, without a pilot in control. Amateur UAVs are non-military and non-commercial. They typically fly under “recreational” exceptions to FAA regulations on UAVs, so long as the pilots/programmers keep them within tight limits on altitude and distance. Usually the UAV is controlled manually by Radio Control (RC) at take-off and landing, and switched into GPS-guided autonomous mode only at a safe altitude. (Confused by all the acronyms and unfamiliar terms in UAVs? A glossary is here.)
What do I need to make one?
---1) An RC plane, muticopter (quadcopter/hexacopter/tricopter, etc) or helicopter. You can buy them ready to fly, including autopilot, here. If you want to build your own, these instructions are a good starting point.
---2) An autopilot, such as Pixhawk (see below)
---3) Optional: a useful “payload”, such as a digital camera or video transmission equipment
What does DIY Drones have to offer?
The DIY Drones community has created the world's first "universal autopilots", ArduPilot Mega (APM) and its next-generation big brother, Pixhawk. They combines sophisticated IMU-based autopilot electronics with free autopilot software that can turn any RC vehicle into a fully-autonomous UAV.
A full setup consists of:
Pixhawk autopilot: The electronics, including twin processors, gyros, accelerometers, pressure sensors, GPS and more (shown at right). Available from mRo.
- Mission Planner software: Desktop software that lets you manage APM and plan missions, along with being a powerful ground station during flights and helping you analyze mission logs afterwards.
- Autopilot software (automatically loaded by the Planners):
- Arduplane: for any fixed-wing aircraft
- Arducopter: for any rotary-wing aircraft
- ArduRover: for any ground- or water-based vehicle
You can buy Ready-to-Fly UAVs planes from mRo and multicopters from HobbyKing
Last but not least is flight safety. The RCAPA guidelines are an excellent set of checklists and do's and don'ts, so please refer to them.
Also, here's the FAA's official word on what's legal and what's not.
| Apollo Guidance Computer | ATmega168 |
| $15M | $2 |
| 55W Power |
0.055W Power |
| ~1 MIPS? |
20 MIPS |
| 70 lbs. |
0.0022 lbs. |
Meanwhile, Jack Crossfile digs into the Shuttle's technical details and finds similar evidence of massive inginuity by NASA engineers: "The shuttle runs at 1Hz during liftoff & 6Hz in orbit. Most electronics R manually shut down in orbit to save fuel. The gyros were originally sampled to only 4 bits because they didn't have enough clockcycles. Full scale range was based on liftoff oscillations, not orbit. The shuttle doesn't use PID loops because there's not enough fuel to constantly hunt for equilibrium. It uses XY plane feedback. Given a start & end state, the computer looks up the exact required burn time in a table. The pilot has to manually select lookup tables based on payload, robotic arm position, & docking. The standalone shuttle is a rigid body while a docked space station & extended robot arm turn it into a flexing body. They calibrate the tables using very accurate mission simulations in software which accurately predict the center of gravity, moments of inertia, flexing modes, aerodynamics, & noise. On STS-1 they had an unpredicted oscillation during tank separation which almost killed the crew. Also, most of the computers failed on STS-1 because of floating solder balls." All info from here.
