GeorgeM
Senior Heliman
Location: Europe
My Posts This: Topic Forum | Hi Harris,
I agree with you totally on your last post except the last phrase when you mentioned two axis only.
From what I hear AP'ers want.... , And from what I know I want,
I feel that for general AP but especially for panoramic work ( which is where the tricky part is )..
the basic requirements are :
1) to have the helicopter fly into a position (of known altitude if doing balcony work)
2) select a switch or button on the transmitter where the heli will maintain position within 3 meters radius, sometimes even less ( for parallax error reduction when low in altitude )
3) with the same switch, the heli will maintain the same altitude within 2 meters or quite close to that
4) during this brief time, say 20 seconds, all panoramic shots are taken.
5) switch is turned off, fly to a new position and flick it back to hold, and goto item 2)
Sounds simple. Effectively, hard to achive in a low cost package.
Some design ideas....
How about developers like FMA, Carvec, Spartan, Robbe, Colin Mill CSM, General Laser, etc,
create a package that will be using the following "simpler" line of thought :
The helicopter is flown in a stable manner under an infra red stabilizing system.
When the "switch" is turned on, 3 accellerometrs are brought in the control loop to limit acceleration very "harshly" ( algorithm ) on lateral/vertical movement. The gyros for full 6 DOF are not needed since the helicopter is supposed to be relative stable under IR flight control. Thereby simplifying the software ( a lot ) !!!
When the switch is turned off, the accelerometers are brought out of the loop since the helicopter will have to be flown ..ie tilted.. to move to another location, and therefore, the resulting components will the disturb the "harsh algorithm" on the accels.
I am using the word "harsh" because for an accelerometer to have good resolution at the low acceleration rates exhibited when a hovering helicopter moves translationally, the output from the accelerometers has to be worked up hard to give any indication of motion.
IE.. needing very clever filtering and damping.
Can JohnC /Angelos/ ???? .. chime in on this proposal ??
Thankyou. |
