User talk:AntonK
Me, This is Me.
Hi Anton,
I'm interested in implementing a working quadrotor autopilot using the Paparazzi board. I haven't found any details on it though (what extra hardware is needed and what software modifications need to be made to accomodate the differences between plane and helicopter). I'm a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz and we are developing a network testbed, one aspect of which is flying nodes (both planes and helicopters). We desperately need an autopilot to make deployments manageable and I'm confident that Paparazzi will deliver this capability to us. I'd much appreciate any pointers you can give me to help me reach that goal. I'm already working on the plane autopilot - haven't had a successful AUTO2 flight yet but it's around the corner.
Vladi
Vladi,
Simple answer to your question is that an IMU is needed to fly a heli (replacing the IR sensors). A filter must be written to fuse the data between the sensors, and the control algorithms must be modified for 3 axis control(roll, pitch, and yaw). No one with Paparazzi has done an autonomous flight of a helicopter that I know of. Attitude stabilization is as far as Ive gotten, and ENAC has demonstrated a GPS position hover once. The new Hardware/Software Suite called Booz2 should make fully autonomous flight a reality once the bugs are worked out.
AJ