All posts by Rich Burton

Community, Competition, Hardware, Software, Videos

DELFTACOPTER – Hybrid Drone on a Mission

DELFTACOPTER, an electric, long range, transitioning autonomous delta-wing helicopter, is on a mission. What mission? In this case, it’s the 2016 Outback Medical Express challenge and the MAVLab Team at TUDelft has high hopes for their hybrid aircraft.

This year’s Outback Medical Express mission requires a UAV to pick up and bring back a blood sample of an ill-fated person called “Outback Joe” located at an inaccessible roughly known location 30 kilometer away remote location with unknown terrain.

DELFTACOPTER

Powered by PaparazziUAV, the DELFTACOPTER is also equipped with state of the art on-board stereoscopic wide field of view computer vision.

Property description Value
Flight
Cruise speed 45 knots at 300 watt
Most efficient speed 35 knots at 230 watt
Maximum speed 50 knots
Physical
Weight 4kg
MTOW 4,5kg
Wing area 0,496 m2
Wing loading 8kg/m2
Span 1,54m
Length 0,6 m
Height 0,4m
Energy
Power usage in hover 280 watt
Main battery energy 10000mAh ~ 225 Wh
FTS battery energy 250mAh ~ 2Wh
RPM in forward flight 450 rpm
RPM in hovering flight 1550 rpm
Datalink
Datalink 1 protocol Iridium satellite communication
Datalink 1 range Global
Datalink 2 protocol 900 MHZ long range communication
Datalink 2 range 40km
Weather properties
Maximum wind speed 30kts
Maximum precipitation Light rain

All the best to the MAVLab Team and their DELFTACOPTER during their Outback Challenge adventures.

Related Links:
DELFTACOPTER Site
DELFTACOPTER Video
MAVLab Outback Medical Express Article
MAVLab Ambulance Drone Video
MAVLab DelFly – Robot Dragonfly Video
1BitSquared Lisa/MX Autopilot

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Community, Release, Software

Flying Robot Commander + PPRZLINK = Improved MultiMAV Management

For those of us that use Paparazzi to fly multiple MAVs, the current GCS does a great job of managing and presenting just the right amount of information for safe flight. That being said, there’s always room for new tools. It’s my pleasure to introduce the Flying Robot Commander, a PPRZLINK enabled web application for managing multiple MAVs.

The Flying Robot Commander(FRC) is a Flask/python based RESTful web application that integrates with Paparazzi UAV via PPRZLINK. That’s right, you can now write python code to access/extend Paparazzi UAV capabilities (NOTE: one of the main complaints about the current Paparazzi GCS is that it’s written in ocaml). In addition to python, PPRZLINK also provides C and ocaml libraries for those that need them.

For more details related to the Flying Robot Commander, PPRZLINK and Paparazzi UAV in general, see the following links:

– Flying Robot Commander Github
– PPRZLINK Github
– Paparazzi Github
– Paparazzi Wiki

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