[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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