📋 Admin Preparation
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Goal Summary | test autonomy system, the detect target for IR beacons | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Status? |
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Desired Airframe | Houston & Foam Plane | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Date(s) | Feb 2nd, 2025 |
🥅 Test plan
Flight Card 1
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What is being tested?
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Hardware to be installed, items to bring, batteries, etc (change status to success when installed or plan for installing at flight test is done)
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CLUSTER ESTIMATION TEST PROCEDURE (HOUSTON) | ||
Procedure | Goals / Objectives | Knockoff criteria |
| Get the script to run (either manually or auto start on bootup) | Script is not running |
| Know true value of the IR beacon location and home location. Use phone GPS to determine IR beacon locations as a backup. |
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Flight Card 2
Foam Plane Pilot Training
Pilot: Manasva Katyal Jerry Tian
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What is being tested?
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| Info |
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Hardware to be installed, items to bring, batteries, etc (change status to success when installed or plan for installing at flight test is done)
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Necessary Preparation
Explain what capacity you need, what needs to be mounted, etc.
Necessary items:
Houston Drone
Foam Plane
6x 3s batteries
IR camera (picamera) with IR bandpass filter
2x IR Beacon
Measuring tape
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Autonomous/repeatable missions
🫂 Mandatory Attendees
This is a section for all attendees from your subteam which will be present for this flight test. (because they are testing their products, or otherwise)
Name | Phone # | Sub-team | Role |
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Yuchen Lin | 6474256385 | Flight Test |
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Manasva Katyal | 2896985018 | Flight Test |
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Flightline Team
Name | Phone # | Role | Reason |
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Pre-Flight Checklists
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⏲️ Flight Test Timeline
Date/Time | Action | Notes |
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10:00 am | Briefing | |
11:00 am | Planned Departure | |
11:30 am | Arrived & Set Up | |
11:30 - 1:00 | Huston IR Cam Test | |
1:00 - 1:30 | Foam Plane Test | |
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💻 DEBRIEF
Flight test debrief report
We didn’t bring Wrestrc key fob, calling the number on the gate let us in.
Card 1: Huston IR Cam (Pilot: Manasva Katyal , GSO: Jerry Tian )
1st flight : stablizing
Took off in Stabilise @ 11:52
Landed in Stabilise @ 11:52
Huston was drifting a fair amount in Stabilize mode, so switched to Loiter for future flights
2nd flight: test in loiter
Took off in loiter @ 11:54
Landed in loiter @ 11:55
Was much more stable, verified maneuverability before running IR cam test
3rd flight: 5m test w IR camera
Took off in loiter @ 11:56
Landed in loiter @ 12:00
Produced images from the IR camera were mostly white due to the snow. IR camera is not detecting just IR? Otherwise the cold snow should be black in the images.
Impossible to detect the IR beacons because whole image is white.
Perhaps look into better bandpass filter.. defer to Tong Zhang Maxwell Lou
Also, some images were corrupted (0 bytes)… reason unknown again deferred to Autonomy leads
time gap between flight 3, 4 is due to image analysis on Evan Zhao 's computer
Tested IR camera functionality by taking pictures of people
4th flight: 10m test w IR camera round 2
Took off in loiter @ 12:32
Landed in RTL @ 12:34
Images again are too white to detect any IR beacons (pretty much same result as flight #3)
Corrupted images again…
Data merge worker died too, strangely
At the end went into battery failsafe and RTL’d
Current draw was very high due to RPI load + very cold temperatures
Additional Notes:
Near the end was getting quite hard to test due to very cold conditions (affecting battery, etc.)
TX16S kept going into emergency mode… not sure if this was due to cold or something else
15m test was called off due to lack of image usefullness + very heavy snow
Card 2: Foam Plane Pilot Training
Were running into quite a few issues at this point (cold/snow/TX16s emergency mode)
Waited inside car for a fair bit to allow things to heat up
“Takeoff” & Crash @ 1:23
Jerry Tian ran the plane with Manasva Katyal as pilot, on launch noticed an immediate right yaw and roll. Correction inputs were put in quite quickly but had no effect.
Plane crashed nose first, and prop as well as a part of main fuselage.
Theory:
Servos are rated from 0C to 55C, temperature was -15C so were very sluggish in response
Also, might need more power, so perhaps add additional prop
Frankly takeoff speed was never enough… might need to look into a basic landing gear
Enjoy the video below 😭
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Main Takeaways:
Autonomy likely needs to look into IR cam/filter and worker dying issue more, or we need to test in a non-snowed environment.
Fixed wing pilot training may require some reworking.