[Canberrauav] crazy ideas
tridge at samba.org tridge at samba.org 
Fri Jan 21 15:35:08 EST 2011 

Hi Jack,

A few of us at OzLabs had a discussion around the lunchtable today
about ways to do the package drop. If the plane will have a powerful
enough engine to hold it in a vertical climb then one thing we could
do is teach the autopilot to hover the plane vertically - like a
helicopter. I've seen other model planes do that sort of vertical
climb and hover, but I wonder if that is only for the foam planes, or
if it is something we could do with the plane you're thinking of
building for the UAV project.

If we could hover vertically then for package delivery we could go
into "helicopter" mode and hover just above the target, then drop the
water bottle straight down, perhaps sliding it out of the back of the
plane after a pin is released. I think it would be quite possible to
teach Ardupilot to fly like that, and get it to hover very accurately,
adjusting its position via the altimeter and GPS.

Another crazy idea was to carry a small electric helicopter on board,
maybe something like the arducopter (see
http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/) then drop that from the
plane. The helicopter would take the waterbottle direct to the target,
using its own onboard autopilot. It could land right next to outback
joe.

I expect the drag from carrying a helicopter on board would be far too
much for our plane, but I thought I'd mention this idea in case you
think its workable.

Cheers, Tridge

PS: I now have my ArduPilotMega and IMU boards all soldered up

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