Proxima II as drone

[chiloschista]

Hello ensemble,

 

it's longtime now I wanted to start a thread about that plane.

The starting point is a little bit philosophical. It's all about apocalyptics and integrateds. That was very well described by Umberto Eco in his book "Apocalypse postponed" (Apocalittici e integrati), back in the eighties. Now, a few days from Eco death, it could be the right time to resurrect this concept.

With all that discussing about drones, sometimes from peoples who does even not know of what they are speaking, it could well be watched that those two categories of peoples never miss. Even forgetting that such discussions are probably old as homo sapiens. One of the theories I like the most about language beginning is that humans felt the need of a sort of complex communication to be able to ... tattle  Stop!

Back on flying, my position is more lead to use what I have available for my needs, not wanting to be an apocalyptic nor an integrated.

Today we have autopilots. I did a lot of testing for a team (UavDevBoard) and had a great time with them, developing the firmware (Matrixpilot). There are several videos on my youtube and vimeo channels, showing the potential of such systems, but to stay on topic here I would like to show what a usual sailplane, equipped with an autopilot could achieve.

First the electrical layout:

I agree, it's a little bit complex, but not that much at the end. The main goal was to hold the ailerons differential, full flaps, camber, landing devices etc control by RC.

The autopilot job is to stabilize the plane if needed and have autonomous flight capabilities. The firmware accepts both waypoints and LOGO flight plans. LOGO allow for very complex patterns.

This video shows the controls possible. Nothing new for a usual glider, but not for a drone.

That one to show the first test flights:

Now a demonstration of a flight where the autopilot is used to hold a thermal.

On screen telemetry is done with DashWare, using the telemetry file recorded by the autopilot.

To summarize, this is a real drone, capable of autonomous flight, put together to set the limits a little bit further and to learn something new. It is the last one of a series, which includes an autonomous FPV FunCub, autonomous Funjet (243Km/h), besides some other. Plans were to install a video system and do FPV flight, but still not done (video was recorded with a Mobius). Actually I have other priorities (Red*).

Best regards,

Ric