The Cyfoam is a hybrid vehicle developed at ENAC Drone Lab. The aircraft is a foam, with a 3D printed fuselage, version of the composite-made Cyclone.
The vehicle is powered by the new autopilot board Chimera! which executes the control algorithms developed by Ewoud from Delft MAV Lab. We are currently aiming at a total autonomous mode, e.g., auto take off and auto landing.
The Disco from Parrot is a fixed-wing aircraft designed for FPV with all the feature already available on their Bebop2, plus some extra things, like airspeed sensor, SBUS input and PWM outputs.
The autopilot itself is all integrated in a box called C.H.U.C.K. and it allows nice and easy flights with the SkyController2 and the Cockpitglasses, connected via Wifi.
Just like the Bebop and ARDrones, it is now possible to fly this drone using Paparazzi. Just connect to the plane, upload your code and you’re ready to go! Here is the video of the maiden flight:
More information are available on the wiki: http://wiki.paparazziuav.org/wiki/Disco
Special thanks to ArduPilot and Andrew Tridgell who implemented the driver for PWM output on this plane and his tips for debugging the Paparazzi version.
As many of you know a programmer and debugger is a tremendously useful tool for many Paparazzi UAV based autopilots like the Lisa/MX and Lisa/S.
Our friends at 1BitSquared are running a Kickstarter to make a new revision of their Black Magic Probe JTAG SWD debugger and programmer with the addition of the 1Bitsy. 1Bitsy is a development board using the same CPU as Elle0 and Lisa/MX Paparazzi autopilots. It can serve as a good prototyping platform for payload control or for your next autopilot project.
Every hobbyist and hardware enthusiast will find these boards to be an indispensable part of their tool kit. Check out their campaign and spread the word! 😀
The International Micro-Air Vehicle Conference and Competition was held last week in Beijing, China, organized by the Beijing Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore.
As usual, the level of the teams involved in the competition is higher year after year and we had a great show. The team from the MAVLAB of TUDelft was participating to both indoor and outdoor session. During the outdoor, they unfortunately couldn’t show their best due to many communication issues, preventing them to fully use their RTK Bebop2 (and also some regressions in Paparazzi code, hum hum… 🙁 ).
The next day, the indoor team did its best to perform well. And despite the difficult tasks to pick up and drop objects, they tried hard until the end. It was worth the effort as they reached the 3rd place of the competition, a few points ahead the Spanish team of Madrid (CVG-UPM)! We could almost call it a draw as both team really did their best with great spirit.
But, this was not their only great achievement. The paper Control of a hybrid helicopter with wings by Christophe De Wagter and Ewoud Smeur received the Best Paper Award of the conference for their work on the control issues raised by the novel design of the Delftacopter and the solution they found to solve them. Congratulation to them and all the team involved in the Delftacopter!
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.
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
We will be at DefCon 24. A yearly hacker conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you are there make sure to say hi. To get in touch just send a mention or private message to @paparazziuav on twitter or a contact us in our Gitter Discuss channel.
1BitSquared will be there selling their hardware. If you are interested send them a message to @1bitsquared on twitter. They will have Elle0, Lisa/S, Lisa/MX, Lisa/M autopilots for sale as well as Lisa/S starter kits and Quad Kits. The new Black Magic Probe v2 programming and debugging adapter will be available at the Hacker Warehouse in the Vendor area.
See you there!
Last May, the ISARRA conference (International Society for Atmospheric Research using Remotely Piloted Aircraft) was held in Toulouse, France (http://www.meteo.fr/cic/meetings/2016/isarra/).
The week before the conference, a few teams of researchers gathered to share experiences and fly their drones at the Atmospheric Research Center of Lannemezan near the Pyrenees. Among them was some of the oldest users of Paparazzi: Martin Muller (http://blog.pfump.org), the team of Joachim Reuder from the Geophysical Institute of Bergen, the UAV Lab of ENAC and the French Meteorological Research Center who was hosting the event.
Many flights have been done, including for the ENAC lab, the first flight using ChibiOS v3 implementation and some autonomous catapult takeoff.
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
Dear Paparazzians,
I made a new video describing the details of the G0 Paparazzi UAV GPS receiver module. In the video I go through and describe the several design decisions we made to ensure high Signal to Noise Ratio, good multi path GPS signal rejection and overall reliability of the GPS for use in airborne robotics applications.
I hope this video is helpful. If you think so too please let me know in the YouTube comments. If you enjoyed the video make sure to like it on YouTube and subscribe to the channel.
Check out the G0 paparazzi wiki page for more information about the GPS.
G0 is now available for purchase in the 1BitSquared store together with the Elle0 autopilot. It is available in both of our stores; the US Store and the German Store. So if you live in the European union, you can now buy Elle for your next UAV project without having to worry about customs and shipping time. 🙂
Cheers, and successful flights,
Esden and the 1BitSquared team
Dear Paparazzians,
I made a new video describing the details of the Elle0 Paparazzi UAV autopilot. Elle0 is now available for purchase in the 1BitSquared store together with the G0 companion GPS receiver. In the video I go through and describe every IO pin as well as some of the design differences to the Lisa/MX Autopilot. Additionally, I describe how you can add a battery voltage monitor to your Elle0 using a voltage divider circuit.
I hope this video is helpful. If you think so too please let me know in the YouTube comments. I am planning to make many more videos describing different aspects of Paparazzi UAV, not only hardware but also flight videos and Paparazzi software tutorials and tips. If you think it will be useful for you make sure to subscribe and tell me in the comments what you would like to see.
Also, check out the Elle0 paparazzi wiki page for more information about the autopilot itself and diagrams of the system. Additionally to the Elle0 and G0 boards we have also released a matching R0 radio board and UU0 UART to USB adapter boards. We will be making videos describing more parts of the modular system we are working on soon. Whereas the Elle0 and G0 are already in stock, the R0 & UU0 are available for Pre-Order in our US store.
Cheers, and successful flights,
Esden and the 1BitSquared team
