CanberraUAV

Notes for meeting chair/minute takers

2013 March 25

Report on in-progress items

DGPS for increased positioning accuracy

install roof box tomorrow

no progress on the software this week

SAR Scenario Project

meeting tomorrow 6 -> 7 @ Belconnen

Tridge / Chris to attend, open invitation to anyone else

Tony O’Leary (trainer), elaborate scenarios

next step: SES integration

CSIRO

CSIRO Gungalin Research Station

2 adjacent fields, 2km * 1km (split by a road)

seeking permission to fly there

MHV-quadcopter-workshop

workshop was finished over the weekend, flying over Saturday and Sunday

lots of work, lots of Fun.

estimated 25% crash rate, simulator helps

Many broken arms on the frames

write-up in progress

students should always fly with telemetry enabled

flyaway analysis from Sunday

Tridge working with Randy on patches

Testing RTL mode. Hover @ ~5m, switch to RTL and it started climbing

unable to regain control, climbed out of sight!

it took a few hours to find it, only a few hundred meters away

remarkably undamaged

no telemetry, missing data set (but did manage to extract some logs from the data flash)

Why did it happen?

has been reproduced in SITL

vibration aliased down to low frequencies, false altitude dropping

root cause: fix vibration problems

fix, as barometric and inertial altitude diverge, start weighting the altitude more heavily

Solutions?

WorkArround 1: setting filter frequency to 20 Hz (down from 42 Hz)

WorkArround 2: lower the time constant INAV_TC_Z in the config (5 or 6 instead of 7)

Insurance: fix geofence: on geofence breach, weight up barometer term

bench test Vibration with MP, dampening etc.

warnings?

Mitigation

review safety briefing/planning

indoor (hire a Gymnasium) for first flights (at least until we are sure each copter is flying well)

tethered flights? might work, need to try it

more remote site for first outdoor flights (e.g. out of range of civilisation in worst-case scenario)

smaller copters (e.g. crazy-flight nano)

Mu Thermal camera

Nothing to report

Assisting local schools with their UAV programs

Nothing to report

Other Business

fighting walrus: group of people developing a 3DR radio for connecting to ipad / android

getting it to talk to the ARDrone, H264 encoder onboard

See Gerard Toonstra’s recent work: http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread.php?4869-The-complexities-of-streaming-HD-video-downlinks