The future of UAVs is...

[emile]

 

Hehe, just a teaser for my yesterday's tests on VRBRAIN with latest 2.9 firmware! VRBRAIN uses the powerful ARM STM32F4 CPU and runs with the actual 2.9 firmware codebase.

So while we are upgrading the code to the new AP_HAL_xxx standard I finally took some time to test our recent port of the Arducopter 2.9 code, still based on the old code standard.

 

This is a small video of the faetures:

 

This is the location of the code and DFUs: http://code.google.com/p/vrbrain/downloads/list

I have also set up a small and rather incomplete "how to" to upload the firmware into the STM32F4 ARM Microcontroller 

Man!, never had so much fun with the Auto mode! I am using a UBlox GPS on a Hexa frame with 10x4.5 APC props.

The main difference between our code and the original Arducopter one is that we drive our main stabilization loop at 400Hz (instead of 100Hz) and get samples from the Gyro and Accel at 1000Hz (instead of 100Hz) with only 10% CPU time used.

The filter of the MPU6000 is set to 98Hz, although the Alt_Hold with the accelerometers worked very well.

Some perf mon :

VRBRAIN @ 2500Hz-400Hz

Function:   cpu   avg(ms) max(ms) Hz

fast_loop   10.31 0.257   0.325   400.0

fifty_hz    0.20  0.040   0.093   50.0

gcs_check   0.16  0.004   0.118   350.0

update_GPS  0.07  0.014   0.105   50.0

medium_loop 0.04  0.007   0.029   50.0

super_slow  0.02  0.189   0.277   1.0

slow_loop   0.01  0.012   0.032   10.0

free CPU:   89.17 8922

Here is the picture of the Waipoint path, as you can see I am not good in drawing, but the path was followed very well.

 

 

One thing that impressed me was the alitude, in all the auto mission only 1 meter between max and min.

The new altitude hold with use of accels is doing a great job also in autoland and auto-approach.

 

 

To all the AC team a big thanks for the huge work!

And thanks to Roberto and VirtualRobotix for his VRBRAIN!

 

Emile