All posts by Felix Ruess

Release, Software

Paparazzi V5.6 release

Penguin_logoThe Paparazzi Development Team is pleased to announce the release of a brand new version of Paparazzi; v5.6, providing you with lots of new features and improvements!

If you’re curious to know the specifics on what has been added and improved you can, go here for an overview.

If you are already using paparazzi with Git, to enjoy all improvements you can switch to this new version via:

git remote update && git checkout v5.6

If you are new to Paparazzi and want to join in flying with it, you can you can simply download a tarball or get the source code via:

git clone https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi.git -b v5.6

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Community, Release, Software

Paparazzi V5.4 Release

Penguin_logoThe Paparazzi Development Team is pleased to announce the release of a brand new version of Paparazzi; v5.4, giving you the option to enjoy lots of new features and improvements, happy new year!

If you’re curious to know what has been added and improved you can, go here for an overview. For your enjoyment and to view what all those changes look like, click here.

If you are already using paparazzi with Git, to enjoy all improvements you can switch to this new version via:

git remote update && git checkout v5.4.

If you are new to Paparazzi and want to join in flying it, you can you can simpy download a tarball or get the source code via:

git clone https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi.git -b v5.4.

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Release, Software

Paparazzi V5.2 Release

Penguin_logoPaparazzi Development Team is pleased to announce the release of the Paparazzi v5.2 stable version with lots of new features and bugfixes.

See the CHANGELOG for an overview of new features and bugfixes. See the Release Upgrades page for hints on configuration changes that may be required if you are moving to v5.2 from v5.0.

If you are already using paparazzi with Git, you can switch to this new branch with

git remote update && git checkout v5.2.

For new user, you can download a tarball or get the source code with

git clone https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi.git -b v5.2.

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Release, Software

Paparazzi V5.0 Release

Penguin_logoFor the opening of the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, the Paparazzi Development Team is pleased to announce the release of the Paparazzi v5.0 stable version, including the support of the Parrot AR.Drone2. See this page for more instructions.

See the changelog for an overview of new features and bugfixes.

See the Release Upgrades page for hints on configuration changes that may be required if you are moving to v5.0.0 from v4.2.0.

If you are already using paparazzi with Git, you can switch to this new branch with

git remote update && git checkout v5.0.

For new user, you can download a tarball or get the source code with

git clone https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi.git && git checkout -b v5.0 origin/v5.0.

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Release, Software

Paparazzi V4.2.0 Release

Penguin_logoJust before the end of the world, discover Paparazzi v4.2.0 stable version.

Based on the last stable branch v4.0, this new release offers several improvements, especially the total energy control developed by TUDelft. See the changelog for an overview of new features and bugfixes.

If you are already using paparazzi with Git, you can switch to this new branch with

git remote update && git checkout v4.2.

For new user, it will be the default branch when getting the source code from Github. You can also download a tarball or Zip file of the v4.2.0_stable source code.

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Release, Software

Paparazzi V4.0 Release

Penguin_logoThe Paparazzi Development Team is pleased to announce the release of the Paparazzi v4.0 stable version.

After several months of testing and debugging, the release preparation branch v3.9 has been released as v4.0. See the changelog for an overview of new features and bugfixes.

If you are already using paparazzi with Git, you can switch to this new branch with

git remote update && git checkout v4.0.

For new user, it will be the default branch when getting the source code from Github. You can also download a tarball or Zip file of the v4.0_stable source code.

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Release, Software

Stable Paparazzi Releases

Git-Logo-2ColorIn order to improve the development workflow and provide stable releases we have changed our git branching model.

The branch “master” is now our development branch.

  • The “dev” branch was renamed to the release preparation branch “v3.9”. Switch to this branch if you want stable code.
  • “master” was reset to the previous “locm3” branch, where development will happen now with libopencm3 for the STM32 architecture.

Please see the RepositoryStructure page for more details.

As soon as we are ready to release v4.0 there will be tarballs available if you don’t want to use Git.

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Software

Adaptive Control in Paparazzi

Paparazzi features adaptive control loops that can cope with substantial “changes” of the airframe in flight. May it be a motor dropout, partial loss of control surfaces or dropping a heavy payload. As videos usually say more than words, here are two that demonstrate this.

The first video shows Paparazzi’s adaptive control loops (written by Pascal Brisset and Gautier Hattenberger at ENAC) for fixedwing aircraft keeping a Multiplex Twinstar on track, despite dropping a portion of the right wing and aileron and then switching the right motor off.

Martin Mueller equipped the Twinstar with video cameras to document this. You can easily see that after part of the right wing is dropped the adaptive controller compensates for this automatically although only 50% of the aileron control surface remains. To make things even worse, the motor on the same side was switched off to simulate engine failure but the autopilot manages to keep it stable. At that point the aircraft became virtually impossible to fly by the very skilled safety pilot in manual control.

Although the adaptive vertical control for multicopters (by Antoine Drouin at ENAC) has been around for almost two years now, here is a demo of a Paparazzi Booz quadrotor suddenly dropping 50% off its weight.

In this case, a Kalman filter of dimension one is used to estimate the the ratio of vertical acceleration over the produced thrust. This basically equates to the inverse of the mass during flight. Then the inverted dynamic model is used to issue a nominal thrust command based on this estimate. With this the quadrotor is able to stay very near same height, whereas with standard feedback control loops it would “go through the roof” when the payload is suddenly dropped.

Cheers, your Paparazzi Team

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Community, Hardware, Software

Code Refactor

OrganizedCodeAfter many years of development, so many new autopilot boards and aircraft types have been added that a sourcecode reorganization was needed. This undertaking is started and will simplify the continuous evolution of the project.

To benefit from these important changes, it only requires you to update your airframe configuration document once. After you have updated, you should not notice the significant reorganization that is going on behind the scenes. This change will benefit your aircrafts flying successfully for the years to come. The required changes are described on Update Your Airframe Configuration.

At this point several developments are blocked because of this. Therefor we kindly request you to upgrade your airframe configuration documents as soon as possible and thank you in advance for doing so.

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