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Introduction

Summary

  • We are taking on a short term project to remove the paper airplanes from the E7 atrium ledges this term.

  • This test will be to validate our engineering solution in a low stakes area.

    • Our solution is blowing the planes away with prop wash from Houston.

    • This is the simplest solution we got and works well on the ground in the SDC.

  • There will be a subsequent flight test (not covered by this document) with a different flight plan in which will involve closing off the north section of E7 in addition to the south section to clean the area.

Aircraft Information

  • We will be flying a https://uwarg-docs.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ARCHS22/pages/2194702345/HOUSTON+Class+Quadcopters?search_id=98b548d4-d439-4470-b8c8-fe02477501af.

    • Lidar and rangefinder depopulated.

      • While the readings my be useful these add weight and cost to the system.

    • Weight is just above 1kg w/ battery.

      • Measured at 1.3kg with the prop guards and all

    • GPS will not function due to being indoors and pilots have practiced GPS denied flight.

      • GPS was manually disabled in ardupilot

      • the GPS module was still fitted on the drone so we could use it’s internal compass

    • Flight mode Stabilize or AltHold decided by pilots discretion.

  • Sub 250 gram drones may be used as well in this testing if this is deemed as the only permissible option.

    • This was not done.

Known Rules & Regulations

Date

  • We want to do it before the start of F24.

  • We cannot do it on the weekend as plantops is not present.

  • Evenings are preferred as E7 will be mostly depopulated.

  • Date and time must be approved so this document will remain ambiguous

Members

Participating

Confirmed Unavailable

Unavailable until the first day of F24 term.

Further Information

Flight Test Plan

Timing

  • Late in the evening or early in the morning is preferred as E7 will be mostly depopulated.

  • Testing window should be ~ an hour in length.

    • Targeting 30 minutes of setup time and 30 minutes of flight time max.

Location

image-20240827-153527.png

Concerns

Safety Controls

Referring to https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/hazard/hierarchy_controls.html

  • People will be prevented from going close to the drone.

    • This flight plan involves perimeter control to ensure there are no members of the general public / university community in the flight area so nets and tethers will not be employed.

  • Pilots will maintain line of sight with the aircraft at all time.

Liability Controls

  • The 7th floor administration is assuming responsibility if the unlikely case of a propeller strike.

Debrief

image-20240829-021409.png

Media

Timeline

  • started setting up around 8:50 and finished at around 10pm

  • First we went to the stairs between the second and third floor starting the first flight

    • We did not need to do accelerometer or megnetometer calibration in flight.

  • Althold flight mode first, noticed some altitude instability during flight

    • This was somewhat predicted due to barometer error and similar behavior was observed outside.

    • Notably the barometer is temperature sensitive.

  • Changed to Stabilize flight mode for the rest of the flights

    • eliminated the altitude instability and was controllable due to pilot practice with this more manual throttle mode.

  • Disabled compass 1 and enabled compass 2 for determining heading when using 2nd battery

    • The IMU error didn’t get mitigated at all, more compass error noticed after making this change

    • it turns out this magnetometer change doesn’t play an important role in this game

  • Noticed IMU drifts after a period of flight, have to land every 5 mins to reset it

    • Sometimes it would automatically reset, we have videos showing this

    • Sometimes a power cycle was required. This was very time consuming with only two people on the flight line.

  • Ended up consuming all three batteries

    • Each battery can last for estimably 15 mins of flight time

Wins

  • No crashes

    • Prop guards never contacted the wall

  • Cleared some debris

  • Yaw was very stable

  • Throttle was very stable in stabilize flight mode

Issues

IMU Issue

  • We need to look into the IMU center drift issue which made piloting difficult

    • Resulted in

      • We landed on the ledges accidentally twice when the drone was harder to control .

      • Lots of time having to land on the ground over and over again

    • Possible Solutions (we can test these and may brainstorm more)

      • Being able to use controller trim during flight may be able to resolve the issue without landing.

      • Disabling all compasses may help.

      • Changing IMU settings may help.

    • Why we didn’t catch this sooner

      • All our other tests were outside and away from large metal obstacles so this condition did not arise.

    • What caused it:

      • Flying near the metal walls seemed to cause the center drift to become much more severe.

      • Doing sharp stick inputs when in the middle of the event space did not cause any problems.

      • We have videos showing this very clearly.

Debris Removal Issue

  • Paper Airplanes against the wall

    • Resulted in:

      • The paper airplanes get stuck under the metal piece on the edge of the wall and it means even though we’re blowing them up a bit the nose tip remains still stuck in the crevice.

      • hard to clean the paper airplane on the corner/beside the wall

      • sometimes we blow the paper airplane to those spots as well

    • Possible Solutions (we can test these and may brainstorm more of course)

      • propeller direction config such that it sucks objects instead of blow them away?

      • A different approach.

    • Why we didn’t catch this sooner

      • This was our simplest possible approach and we weren’t too sure how it would go

        • that is why we have this test flight !!

    • What caused it:

      • the propellers blows the stuff outwards

      • It’s tough to get close to the wall to avoid blowing stuff closer to the wall

Next Steps

  • Look into issues.

  • Email Derek & Dennis to update them of our status.

  • Try again on Friday evening for another test flight.

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