2001 Aerial Robotics
ScoreCard
Trajectory
GT Alumni Magazine Article (Original Article)
Email from Patuxent River
Webster Field,
Naval Air Station,
Patuxent River,
Maryland.
July 22, 2001
All,
Seven teams showed up at the competition this year, Simon Fraser, Rose Hullman, North Carolina State, Southern Polytechnic U, Purdue U, Waterloo, and of course, Georgia Tech. Waterloo brought nothing but a presentation. All others brought helis, Fraser brought a heli and a fixed wing, and NCU brought a very interesting tandem heli (Chinook style). Purdue flew under manual control, and NCU got their tandem heli to hop 2 inches. Simon Fraser planned to fly their fixed wing but had problems and never attempted it. On Saturday we test flew the cub for the first time after the crash, gave attitude hold to the computer, and tweaked gains. We wanted to then fly in RPV mode to test heading and altitude hold as well as turning, but an as yet unexplained failure occured with the static pressure sensor and we had no altitude data. Saturday night we spent the night on the phone with micropilot and the result of that effort was to replace the barometric pressure altitude data with less reliable GPS altitude data. The next morning we test flew in RPV mode with that configuration and everything seemed to work. The last test was to issue the micropilot a waypoint and see if it navigated successfully. We loaded the competition course waypoints into the computer and pointed the aircraft away from the first waypoint. If the aircraft immediately turned when transferred to auto control we would allow it to run the course. After a false start, the micropilot took over and made huge sweeping turns around all waypoints. :) The end of our flightplan included flying circles around the last waypoint. Coincidentally, that was also a requirement of level 1 that we were less aware of. So a combination of hard work and good luck resulted in TECH WINNING THE 2001 IARC by completing level 1 of the rules set forth. Attached is an excel file of the score tabulations for all teams (have a copy of the rules handy). Tech was the only school to accomplish any kind of autonomous flight at the competition. Our mission now is to tweak what we have to make it more perfect and more reliable; develop our image processing system and as a parallel effort develop the sub vehicle delivery guidance system, as well as the sub vehicle itself. ......but right now, I’m going to sleep! Video was taken of all our flights if anyone wants to watch. Manuj and Richard, we also got pictures of the target that will be used next year. Thanks to those who helped rebuild the airplane after our recent crash and to Micropilot for staying up late to help us troubleshoot! See you when we get home!
Pictures from Competition
Plane Pictures
