Friday, June 13, 2008

Progress!

So, I've been working on the autopilot for the last few days, now that my undergraduate classes are over. Since my last post, I've managed to make a fair bit of progress.

A brief rundown of changes to my autopilot:
--lowered the saturations to ~+/- 40-50 degrees for each control surface and 0.1-0.5 throttle
--added an airspeed hold function based on the altitude hold
--created a desired heading -> desired bank angle function
--created a desired GPS location -> desired heading function

Bumping the saturations down is helping a fair bit. The airplane doesn't try to do too many stupid things now--like try to deflect the elevator so much that it goes unstable. But it still has this funny problem where the steady state aileron command during level flight is nonzero (and negative). I haven't figured out what's causing it yet...but it's being annoying. Fortunately, it's not affecting the results too much (I think). The airplane model still reacts in a fairly sensible-looking manner.

The airspeed hold is a bit of a question mark. We need to figure out how better to integrate it into our command structure. Like...when speed command is issued, give it priority or something.

Jerry worked out the basic heading -> desired bank angle algorithm earlier in the month, but I wasn't able to incorporate it into the autopilot until this afternoon. We were encountering a problem having it turn left, however; it would simply refuse to do so, and dive into the ground when given a command to turn in that direction. Several hours of debugging later, I noticed that our preset ranges for sideslip angle were wrong; it was [0 10] degrees...and not something like [-20 20]. Changing that fixed our problem.

I also worked out the math for the GPS coordinates -> desired heading function. Given a starting GPS location and GPS coordinates for a waypoint, I can issue a command to track that point. The airplane will then turn and attempt to reach that point. Here's a nifty plot of my initial test of this function:

The airplane starts at the red circle and attempts to reach the black diamond. As you can see, it misses the waypoint and gets confused; subsequently, it begins to circle about that point in an attempt to reach it.

Very rudimentary...but it's a great proof of concept. I'm pretty excited about it, anyway. The next step from here is to set up some more control logic so that the airplane has a preset default command in the event that no waypoints can be found. For example, it could just level itself out after reaching a waypoint. But perhaps my only disappointment is that I'm graduating; next year, I'll have to leave this work to someone else. Maybe I should try to finish as much of this as I can....

Monday, May 19, 2008

Visions of the Future

So, since I completed the maiden voyages of the UCLA AIAA blimp project, I've been hard at work designing an autopilot for the UCLA AIAA Autonomous UAV project.

It was slowgoing, and it's only recently that I've made some progress. In fact, we've developed the skeleton for the prototype version of the autopilot. Demonstration images will be forthcoming as we develop the control logic and fine-tune the control systems.

Introduction

Our autopilot makes extensive use of PID (proportional, integration, and derivative) controllers. A [haphazard] method of multiple loop closure was used to develop the control systems. PID loops were used on many of the primary aircraft state elements (e.g. yaw rate, pitch rate and angle, altitude). These loops fed into commands for the aileron, elevator, rudder, and throttle.

The autopilot was designed in Simulink with the aid of the Aerosim Blockset. This third-party blockset for Simulink provides six-degree-of-freedom models for aircraft dynamics, including provisions for modeling the dynamics of piston engines. It also comes with demo models and programs showcasing how to use the blockset.

Current Situation

Currently, the autopilot is capable of responding to commands changing the airplane's bank angle and altitude. In other words, we are capable (in theory) of responding to commands to change heading and altitude. These are the basic elements--as far as I can tell, anyway--required to perform the waypoint navigation tasks required for the AUAV contest we are currently registered for.

Setting up Aerosim to model our airplane turned out to be quite difficult. The chief difficulty lay in the fact that there was little data for us to use to model the engine and propeller. Fortunately, a makeshift solution was provided with the software. One of the demo aircraft included with the blockset was the Aerosonde, a UAV remarkably similar to the one we designed. The engines were of comparable size, as well. But from what I read of the design, the engine used in this aircraft was heavily modified. Thus, using the data for this engine will most definitely throw off any performance results using the Aerosim model. It was decided to use these data, however, for the purposes of enabling the design of the autopilot.

In developing the controls, I made extensive use of a set of notes from an MIT course on aircraft dynamics and controls. Jon provided those, so he has the citation. They were very helpful in understanding what I was looking to do with each control system. Implementing a prototype lateral (heading) controller proved to be rather straightforward. On the other hand, longitudinal (pitch and altitude) control turned out to be much more difficult. Given a fixed throttle, the elevator had trouble maintaining an altitude alone. I was forced to add into the altitude control system (contrary to the notes I was using) a throttle element. This allowed the control system to modify the throttle setting to a more "manageable" level at which the elevator could effectively contribute to maintaining level flight. Unfortunately, motor dynamics are slow, which causes the model to take a longer time to respond to altitude commands (compared to the heading commands).

Next, we'll think about how we can issue speed hold commands that do not conflict with the altitude control such that the airplane is destabilized. We'll also look, as mentioned earlier, at developing the control logic that will be used to generate the appropriate commands. For example, when issuing a heading change command, we may want to have the aircraft respond by going through differently sized incremental heading changes depending on how large the difference between current and desired heading is.

The responses are rather sensitive, however. We need to do some detailed analysis of the system to see where it fails. We would also like to find out its responses to some complex signals that are more representative of what we would ask it to do. Concurrently, I suppose, we will have to develop the control logic determining the commands issued to the autopilot. The end product, ideally, will be an interface for inputting a set of GPS coordinates and altitudes which will be translated into commands such that the autopilot can navigate a set of waypoints. If it works in simulation, we'll go out and test it. We're still waiting on the sensor fusion, though, so flight testing is still a long ways away.

But speaking of testing....Jon and I have both purchased an Easy Star. I'm expecting mine--the kit version, actually--this week. Ideally, it would be a good platform on which to mount the prototyped version of our electronics and control systems. We could then go out to a large park (possibly the RC airfield in Van Nuys) and test out our integrated systems. In the end, though, we'll have to test it in the contest airplane, and that'll be a whole different ballgame. I'll need to get a better feel for the tuning of our control system before we do that.

Anyway, I'm rather proud of what we've accomplished so far. It's a whole lot more than a lot of students at UCLA ever set out to do in college. I'll be a little more relieved if we see some positive, concrete results, though. But we have some hurdles to jump before we reach that point. Building the contest plane, for example. There are some manufacturing and design problems that cropped up there...but those shall wait for another post. Wish us luck!

Friday, February 29, 2008

Late February Updates

Well, there's a lot to cover. First off, we've decided on the necessity of a avionics test bed. After looking at a professor's thesis papers on an autonomous plane he worked on and noting that they had a plane dedicated to testing avionics that crashed three times, it seemed natural that we should make one as well. Considering our inexperience and how much we would like it if our competition plane didn't crash, we're going to make a sort bare bones skeleton plane. We're not kidding about the skeleton part too; it'll probably be a carbon fiber tube with a foam wing and tail attached, an electric motor, some batteries, and a box to hold the avionics we're testing. It should be straightforward to design and build. Having that done early will give us extra time to work on our competition plane.

Looking into the camera transmitter part of things, it looks like one of us will need an amateur radio license to legally handle the power that we'll be transmitting. I found this site that talks about the steps to take to get a license. I also found out that this book is apparently the Bible for studying for the test. Hopefully that book will arrive soon and the license not too long after.

On the electronics side of things, I've got a few bits ordered and coming in (hopefully I can pick them up tomorrow). Things include voltage regulators, 16 MHz crystals for Arduino ATmega168's, and an AVR programmer among other things. The programmer is cool because it's a first step towards moving away from the Arduino and programming directly for the microcontroller. Once those IMU units come in I can start testing those integrated with the multiplexing scheme. I also need to test the timing in the multiplexing scheme by doing some pinging.

For the data link, we're reevaluating our options again. Before I was really stuck on the Digi XStream OEM RF Modem at 19200 baud rate. It gave us a range of about 7 miles but the kicker was its $150 price tag. The XBee-PRO 802.15.4 modules sport a range of about 1 mile with a much nicer price tag of $32. However, the trick is we still don't have a concrete maximum flight range. The rules keep talking about staying within the airfield, but the air field is about a mile by mile (square mile). If we're in the center than a 1 mile range will probably do fine. If we're positioned at the edge of the airfield then we're going to need a range of greater than 1 mile. Which is it? Well, I've got an email on it's way to the contest contact point to see if I can get a clearer picture. That's what's holding up the RF modem selection along with antenna selection.

We still don't know what camera we want. Today we were looking at camera transmitters to see if we could find a range. Of course, bad news. The most powerful 2.4 GHz transmitters we've seen so far (of what little we've seen so far) are about 1 Watt with a range of 300 meters (less than a third of a mile). That's making us think we'd want to send the video over 900 MHz to get more range. However, I don't want a 900 MHz camera transmitter and 900 MHz data link on the same plane. The interference might be intolerable. This gives the XBee-PRO data link some more credibility since it operates on a 4.2 GHz frequency instead. Before we start making conclusions though, we haven't actually found a 900 MHz camera transmitter with the range we want yet. Well, time will tell.

As for the camera gimbal? Unfortunately I wasted time on thinking if we could get away with a single-axis gimbal because the contest requires that we be able to see a 60 degree cone from below the plane in all directions. That basically means we need a two-axis gimbal. We've been looking at the Lynxmotion one as a real quick and simple solution to the problem.

We've looked more into the need of a pitot-static system. From what we can tell, if we want airspeed relative to the plane the pitot-state system is unbeatable in its reliability. It'll be costly though with the tube itself already costing $80 already and the pressure transducers another $35 to $65 each (we need two). We considered software methods, anemometers, hot-wire anemometers and turbine meters already. One of my professors says that a pitot-static tube will probably be what we end up with anyway. Finding the pressure transducers has been an uphill battle, but lucky for us Matt found a company named Servoflo that sells them in a beautiful DIP package. The problem is that we haven't figured out how to order from them yet.

Anyway, I think that's a pretty good update for now. Time to crash.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Multiplexing Scheme Works

Well, apparently that multiplexing scheme I was merely hoping would work actually does work. It manages to pick up data from two ATmega168's acting as buffers to other sensor data. One buffers the GPS data and the other buffers ADC conversions of soon to be accelerometer and rate gyro data (just ordered an ADXL330 and three ADXRS300's today). A sensor collector ATmega168 queries each buffer for data. If data is unavailable then it simply moves on to the next sensor. If data is available it will read it and echo it back to the computer for debugging purposes. Eventually the sensor collector will filter the signal and pre-process it for the flight computer in another ATmega168. Why so many ATmega168's? Well, the Arduino makes it so easy to work with the ATmega168 already so I figured it'd be better to just go with what we know works. Anyway, check out the pictures:


Thursday, February 14, 2008

Updated Components Diagram

This is still preliminary, but it's been updated to show more detail and some new decisions. Instead of the IMU package it looks like we're going to go for the raw components: one triple-axis accelerometer (the one used in Wiimotes actually) and three rate gyros. We'll have to write our own firmware to integrate the gyro rates and come up with actual position and orientation in conjunction with the GPS module. This came up after a discussion with our advisor Damian Toohey. It'll be more work and a bit riskier, but it's also probably more fun and we'll get a lot more from it. I also detailed how I plan on using multiple microcontrollers. This still needs to be proven out since there are concerns about communication speed involving both the multiplexers and controller to controller communication.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Components Diagram (Preliminary)

Hey guys, I couldn't sleep so I updated the components diagram a bit. It's still preliminary, but it's very close to being complete. I'll be proving out the multiplexing scheme for the UART soon. If that works, we might very well be able to pull this off with just an ATmega168 microcontroller. Will we want to? Not quite sure yet. It'll be interesting, that's for sure!


Things that need more design and/or selection: fail-safe system (hard line? relay?), main board selection, camera w/ transceivers, pitot-static system, RC receiver mixing with controller

Things that need proof of concept: UART multiplexing scheme (includes data buffering with microcontroller), range finder (sonic Maxbotix LV-EZ1), magnetic compass, IMU package, servo controller

Things that need research: video capture directly in ground station (possibly using DirectShow)

Well, the above is an incomplete list; it's just all I can think of for now. Great progress has been made in computer to electronics communication, GPS interfacing, and command-query programming. Details to follow, hopefully.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

GPS Logger Works!

Hey everyone,

So despite not have any sleep the night before and it being about 10:42 pm, I managed to get my programming on. I spruced up the ground station interface a bit and added the ability to log received GPS coordinates. The program then plots the GPS coordinate history on top of a satellite view that I took screenshots of from Google Maps. If you can tell in that bottom-left window there, that's Engineering IV (practically my current residence). The red and blue +'s are calibration marks. They are actually off for some reason; the math is right but the image scaling is wrong. Anyway, those green +'s are recorded GPS positions. It was basically me standing out there in the 50 degree cold walking around. I'm actually pretty happy with the precision from this EM-406A GPS module. It's probably a perfectly fine candidate for use in the plane. Anyway, there's more feature building to be done on the ground station program. However, I think it might be time to move onto some controls stuff... Either way, pics of the progress below.


Saturday, February 2, 2008

Initial Tasks Detail

Here's info from my earlier email on the individual tasks.

Plane Structures and Aerodynamics

Plane design isn't my forte, but Jerry and Gerard are extremely good at it. Jerry has already completed an initial iteration, and it's up to where he is to determine where you guys start. For now, I have a lot of online resources that I'd like for everyone to read. Please spend some time familiarizing yourself with general RC plane construction and design.
Airfield Models - Model Builder's Information Source
Airfield Models - Formulas Used with Flying Model Aircraft
Airfield Models - Designing Radio Control Model Aircraft
Styles of Model Aircraft Wing Construction
Aircraft Design, Synthesis and Analysis
MIT OpenCourseWare on Aeronautical Engineering

Plane Propulsion
Gaurav and Ben, I think both of you have things under control. I'd like to see a motor selection in about two weeks. That should give you enough time for the plane to get into a state where motor selection is more realistic. Just keep in mind that understanding how to maintain one is just as important as understanding how to select one. The only online resource I have for you is one you've probably already seen.
Airfield Models - Starting, Running, and Breaking In Model Airplane Engines

Camera Gimbal Design
Tom and Eric, I'd like for both of you to work together on the camera gimbal. Tom was at the meeting so he pretty much knows what this is all about. I need you both to decided on how much gimbal control we need. Some teams can pull it off with a single wide angle camera at the bottom, fixed. For more view we could put the camera on a single gimbal have it do a side to side sweep as it moves along. Actually, if our camera has large zoom on it the field of view would be so small that we would have to gimbal it. Also do a trade study on whether or not a two-axis gimbal would work nicely. Some things to consider are if we want the camera center to coincide with the center of rotation. Figure out the details. This one is a bit long term as it'll probably take about a weeks worth of "looking up" and another two weeks of designing. Remember that we're optimizing for weight, cost, and stability. You'll have to stay in contact with the plane structures team to figure out where the camera ball will go and how it will fit with the rest of the plane.

Camera Selection
Matt's got this down I think, but a little more thought needs to go into it. Literally I'd like to see a camera selection in a week or two if it gets difficult. Just do a quick field of view study on what kind of resolution we want and if we need a zoom lens to augment that. The worst case scenarios is a 2 ft x 2 ft target 250 ft off center and a 2 ft x 2 ft target 500 ft up. We're probably limited to a resolution of about 640x480 max so see what kind of field of view will get us a target screen size large enough to achieve identification. On that note, see what screen size would be large enough. Maybe about 40 pixels by 40 pixels, just eyeballing it. Work with the camera gimbal design group so that they'll have the information to perform selection as well. The field of view kind of determines whether or not we have to gimbal the camera.

Wireless RF Communication
Although we've made a lot of progress on the electronics side, we still need to select a radio frequency module. I'd like for both of you to get extremely familiar with RF communication. There are a lot of things we don't know such as antenna design, antenna types, blocking materials, etc. I think the best way to start is by looking at the two RF modules that I've been looking at. Read the data sheets on them and try to understand every part of the data sheet. One thing to note is that we want one with a really simple TTL serial interface. Basically one with RX (receive) and TX (transmit) pins. It also has to be two way (transceivers) so that we can upload new GPS waypoints. The range we're looking for is at least 1.5 miles. The two below satisfy the requirements with my personal preference towards the XStream OEM RF Module. This has a steep learning curve so please contact me often with questions.

XStream OEM RF Module
http://www.digi.com/products/wireless/long-range-multipoint/xtend-module.jsp

AeroComm 4790-200
http://www.aerocomm.com/rf_transceiver_modules/ac4790_mesh-ready_transceiver.htm

Target GPS Coordinate Acquisition
I've already talked to Ian and I know he has a good idea of what I'm looking for. We basically have to figure out the target position in GPS coordinates from the target's screen coordinates. This can be evaluated given plane GPS position, plane orientation, camera offset, camera orientation, camera field of view, etc. There's probably a lot of information you'll need so keep in touch with me and other team members. You can probably find a nice general solution and fit in the details afterwards. Try to get a good methodology in a week and possibly a full solution in two. Thanks.

Initial Teams

Remember that these are only initial assignments. As tasks get done people will be reassigned with new ones.

Plane Structures

Matt Wong

David Tuman
Scott Larson
Sam Goljahi
Sung Park

Plane Aerodynamics
Jerry Huang

Gerard Toribio
Sharon Querido
Charles Jaikumar
Clarence Gan

Plane Propulsion
Gaurav Bansal
Ben Farahmand

Camera Gimbal Design
Tom Wiltse
Eric Huang

Camera Selection
Matt Wong

Jeffrey Duh

Wireless RF Communication
Jon Nguyen
Marcel Nations
Song Zheng

Target GPS Coordinate Acquisition
Ian Schultz
James Umali

Monday, January 28, 2008

Preliminary Electronics

I just wanted to post the current state of our preliminary electronics design. Well, it's not so much of a design as it is components selection. The first components that we have to figure out are the ones that will supply the controller with what it needs to know about the plane. The second set it the rest including the actual main processor/controller, batteries, data links, etc. There's a lot of research that we've done that isn't reflected on this document yet including a bunch of different camera modules and wireless link we've been looking at as well as processing units. Anywhere, here it is:

Driving Needs

Flight State Parameters
1. Orientation (pitch, roll, yaw)
   a. IMU package
2. Rates (translational, rotational)
   a. IMU package
3. Acceleration
   a. IMU package
4. Airspeed
   a. Pitot-static tube and pressure transducer
5. Heading (faster refresh than GPS)
   a. Magnetic compass
6. Global position
   a. GPS module
7. Global velocity
   a. GPS module
   b. IMU package (acceleration integration)
8. Altitude
   a. General (pressure)
      i. Pitot-static tube and pressure transducer
   b. Back up
      i. GPS module
   c. Detailed (near ground for landing)
      i. Laser range finder
      ii. Sonic range finder

Other Electronics Needs
1. Processing unit
   a. Gumstix + Robostix
   b. ATmega168 microcontroller(s)
   c. TERN Inc. i386-Drive
2. Power supply
   a. Lithium-ion batteries
   b. Nickel metal hydride batteries
   c. Solar
3. Data Link (radio communication)
   a. Radio modem
4. Camera
   a. Camera
   b. Wireless link
5. Servos
   a. http://www.pololu.com/products/servos.html

Solutions

IMU package
Parameters: Orientation (pitch, yaw, roll), rates (translational, rotational), acceleration
Product choices:

IMU 6 Degrees of Freedom - v2 with ADXRS150
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8192
Price: $324.95
Dimensions: 2" × 2" × 1"
Weight: 29 grams (0.064 lbs, 1.0 oz)

IMU 6 Degrees of Freedom - v2 with ADXRS300
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8192
Price: $324.95
Dimensions: 2" × 2" × 1"
Weight: 29 grams (0.064 lbs, 1.0 oz)

Digital compass
Parameters: Heading
Product choices:

Compass Module - HMC6352
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=7915
Price: $59.95
Dimensions: 2" × 2.5" × ?
Weight: ?

Compass Module - Vector 2Xe
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=236
Price: $84.95
Dimensions: ? × ? × ?
Weight: ?

GPS module
Parameters: Global position, global velocity, heading, backup altitude
Product choices:

20 Channel EM-406A SiRF III
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=465
Price: $59.95
Dimensions: 1.18” × 1.18” × 0.42” (30.00 mm × 30.00 mm × 10.70 mm)
Weight: 16 grams (0.035 lbs, 0.56 oz)

LEA-5S ROM-based u-blox 5 GPS Module with KickStart
http://www.abacuscity.ch/abashop?s=142&p=productdetail&sku=78
Price: $99.00
Dimensions: 0.67” × 0.87” (17 mm × 22 mm)
Weight: ?

Pitot/static tube & pressure transducer
Parameters: Altitude (pressure), airspeed
Product choices:

RCAT 6” Stainless Steel Pitot-Static Probe
http://rcatsystems.com/accessories/pitotprobes.php
Price: $79.95
Dimensions: ? × ? × ?
Weight: ?

Kulite Pressure Transducer
http://www.kulite.com/pdfs/pdf_Data_Sheets/ET-3DC-312.pdf
Price: ?
Dimensions: ? × ? × ?
Weight: ?

Sonic range finder
Parameters: Altitude (detailed)
Product choices:

Maxbotix LZ-EVx
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=639
Price: $24.95
Dimensions: 0.785” × 0.870” × 0.735”
Weight: 4.3 grams (0.0095 lbs, 0.15 oz)

Radio modem
Parameters: Data link
Product choices:

XStream OEM RF Module
http://www.digi.com/products/wireless/long-range-multipoint/xtend-module.jsp
Price: $179
Dimensions: 1.6” × 2.825” × 0.665”
Weight: 18 grams (0.040 lbs, 0.63 oz)

AeroComm 4790-200
http://www.aerocomm.com/rf_transceiver_modules/ac4790_mesh-ready_transceiver.htm
Price: ?
Dimensions: 1.65” × 1.9” × ?
Weight: < 20 grams (0.044 lbs, 0.71 oz)

Friday, January 25, 2008

First Iteration of Aircraft Ready

The first iteration of the aircraft has been completed. Attached is a photo of the model built using AVL, an aerodynamics and aircraft stability analysis software. Numerical flight simulations can now proceed using the results generated by AVL.

Software to Hardware

Utilizing the really nice USB serial interface to the microcontroller, I managed to get a simple but effective software to hardware interface. On the microcontroller I coded a simple program to recognize commands sent as ASCII over the serial interface and respond based on the request. So the microcontroller was controlling two servos and talking with the Wii Nunchuck and would send data from the back to the computer if the computer sent a request for it.

On the computer side I wrote a .NET program in C++ that would connect to the serial port. Writing the program acted as a wonderful foundation for what will eventually be our own proprietary ground station software. The program sports a command line that you can just to write your own commands to the microcontroller. Whether it will recognize it or not depends on the microcontroller. Anyway, so it will display what is being received in one panel and a sort of orientation instrument in another panel. The orientation instrument is updated based on returning data on the Wii Nunchuck accelerometers. That data is requested by the program either by hand using the command line or about every 10 milliseconds. If the program picks up data coming back, it parses it to see what kind of data it is. If it recognizes something then it picks out the important details and does whatever it's supposed to do with it.

Anyway, I hope you guys will see the ramifications of this bit of progress. It's essentially a proof-of-concept for a proprietary ground station program. Communication with hardware, graphical display, Windows controls handling, message handling and parsing, and more were achieved with this small program. That's basically everything we need to make a bare bones system. To make a more advanced one, such as one that will utilize Google Earth and such, will take some more tinkering.

Also, on Wednesday, January 25th, I held a kickoff meeting of sorts for the project. This is our first time opening it up to other people. The attendance was nice and overall it went fine. It looks like people share the general objection to simply buying commercial products and putting it together. Hopefully that will motivate people to work hard on actually engineering a final product.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

New (Sorta) Finds

So, while I was busy not listening in class today, I found some more links to parts that we may want to use.

KT&C Camera:
http://www.ktnc.co.kr/product_07.asp
If you look to the left of that page, you will also find lenses for the camera.

Panasonic Camera and Lens: http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelList?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&catGroupId=14458
http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelList?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&catGroupId=14687

Future Hobbies Video System (or other parts if you just go to Future Hobbies):
https://www.futurehobbies.com/items_detail.asp?id=1&item=70

Review of Pan/Tilt gimbals (probably just use for ideas):
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2007/07/testing-three-p.html

Pitot Static Tubes (they call them probes): http://rcatsystems.com/accessories/pitotprobes.php

Pressure transducer to "read" the probe: http://www.kulite.com/reference/Pitot-staticTransducer.pdf

That's all folks!!

We're Alive

So some good news came in today. Well, it's generally not good news that $500 was withdrawn from your bank account, but in this case it is because it means our application for the project went through. While I'm at it, why is information for this competition so hard to find?! I can't even find a contact point for the competition. The website doesn't even have standings from previous years or an archive of reports (it does have the 2007 papers though, linked to the right). Anyway, the links to the right were reorganized a bit. A few more were added too, check it out.

In terms of progress, the currently small team has started its first tasks. Although most of it is research it is rather important research. Matt and I will be looking into flight state acquisition and the many methods to achieve it. Hopefully we'll get those findings onto the blog. Gerard and Jerry in the mean time will be doing an initial design and sizing of our plane. Configuration conditions such as using a high wing for stability instead of complicating manufacturing with a dihedral are about the things they'll be considering. By the end of it we should have a good idea and sketch of what the plane will look like and where the payload will be. Gaurav will be spending some time become our team expert on gas motors, something we need considering that we've never made a plane with a gas motor before.

Worth noting is that our aircraft performance & stability and aircraft design professor (er, lecturer) Damian Toohey is willing to officially advise us on the project. No official adviser is necessary, but it is nice to know that he's ready to help when we need it. He's worked on autonomous formation flying before dealing with IMU's, gas motors, and all that good stuff. He's even made gyro-stabilized camera platforms on blimps before, for fun.

In other news, I've personally ordered a GPS module recently; it should come in this week. It's a unit I bought personally to play with, but hopefully my selection will also be a sufficient one for the project. Even if it isn't, the experience to come from playing with it should be useful enough. I also received my shipment of four extra ATmega168 micro-controllers that work with the Arduino. Hopefully I'll have some cool parallel processes going for things such as input conditioning and data buffering pending query. Matt also stumbled upon the AeroSim blockset for Simulink which should help us rapidly prototype the controller. You can find more about it at http://www.u-dynamics.com/