There are few things that excite guys more than ‘wheels and wings’. And, the titillation is certainly amplified when one of these ‘objets de desir’ is your own brain-child. For the Missouri S&T AESS UAV Team, this feeling is not alien. The team has developed an autonomous RC plane, which, after a lot of effort, has taken wings (literally!). The group employed HIL simulation to determine the feasibility of the plane taking-off. In addition to time savings, the simulation also helped them get a hang of the PID control loops for autopilot. Tweaking, eventually, was a lot easier! Factors like pitch, roll, yaw, altitude and so on were visualized before tuning the plane for autopilot mode. It did take a couple of failed flying attempts before the team successfully managed to perform two 15-minute flights on autopilot. This really inspires me to try something on my own. Anybody interested in taking care of the technology aspect for me?
Via:Hackedgadgets
