Make sure to update the Title following the format “Jan 01, 2020 Flight Test”

Flight Preparation

Requested by:	Megan Spee
Required Sub-teams	Mech Electrical EFS CV Operation Sys-Int
Requested Date	Jul 3, 2023
Location and Time	July 9th 2023 @ WRESTRC 12 - 6 pm
Summary & Goals	CV Auto Successfully detect the landing pad using Vanny
Approved?	Yes

Need camera, jetson, jetson power support
Need the jetson zip-tied on
Need jetson connections fixed up
have EE/CV assess the current wiring setup - may need to add a buck

Required Persons During Test

Name	Phone #	Role	Reason

Name	Role	Reason
Megan Spee	Flight Test Lead	Creating documentation Booking the test flight Creating a thread in #flight-staging
Anthony Luo	Pilot in Command	Aircraft preparation Filling out documentation
@Hardy Yu	Safety	Making sure everyone is safe Bringing Med kit
@Amy Hu	Autonomy Technician	Check through the jetson system Give flight test instruction Records down the needed data

Other Attendees

Name	Role

Name	Role
@Nathan Green
@Conall Kingshott
@Saransh Duggal

Drivers & Seat Arrangement

Driver	Vehicle Type	Passenger

Driver	Vehicle Type	Passenger
Anthony Luo	Rav4
Megan Spee	5-seater Prius

Success criteria

Tests	Success Criteria	Requirements	Outcome

Tests	Success Criteria	Requirements	Outcome
Landing-pad model on Jetson	Landing-pad detection model runs on Jetson startup and saves the logging info with bounding box images in SD card.	computer-vision-python working and can run on startup Jetson wired and mounted on Vanny correctly

Testing Timeline

Date/Time	Action

Date/Time	Action
July 7	Aircraft Assembly Jetson system preparation @Amy Hu Need to verify the CV system is working by Friday middle of the day If Jetson can’t be tested and verified as working by Friday, the flight test won’t happen, and we will put the flight test to next week
July 8	Pre-flight Preparation
July 9, 10 am	Required persons for preflight preparation show up at bay Flight test lead breifly assign task for preparation work
July 9, 11 am	Flight brief from flight test lead
July 9, 11: 15am	Lunch break
July 9, 11: 45am	Loading onto the Car Take your water bottle with you. Go washroom before we leave!
July 9, 12:00	Drive to the test ground
July 9 12 - 3 pm	Flight Testing
July 9 3:15 pm	Debrief

Aircraft Incident Procedures

Incident	Procedure

Incident	Procedure
Crash	Outline the procedure for who will go to handle the aircraft in the event of a crash, what should be done, were emergency equipment is, etc.
Flyaway	Outline the procedure for flyaways. List relevant contact information for local authorities and plans of action to recover control of the aircraft
Configuration Error	Outline steps to take in the event of a configuration issue with the aircraft
Injury
Property Damage

Week-Before To-Do List

Day-Before To-Do List

Pre-Departure Checklist

Pre-flight Safety Checklist

Post-Flight Checklist

Item	Owner

Item	Owner
	ALL MEMBERS PRESENT

Flight Test Debrief

Flight test rundown:

Motor test
Flew in loit, failsafed due to GCS disconnect (rfd900’s)
Turned off GCS failsafe in pilot control mode
Flew over, landed on, over-ground landing pads.
Moved landing pads
flew over, landed on, over-grass landing pads.
Tried auto-tune on battery 1.
- atune completed
- thrust loss on 3
- gps / compass glitch
- “landing” on battery failsafe (3v/cell)
Tried auto-tune on battery 2
- atune completed
- landed & saved

Logs: 2032-07-09

Flight Test Post Mortem

5W vtx delivers clear video.
Landing pad detection model works pretty well.
Autotune on YAW completed successfully twice.

Got lots of messages about Opflow/Lidar health. GPS1 also failing configuration checks
Batteries had a LOT of sag (21V in flight recovering to 23V after)

RCA for Red Items

Create a RCA and keep it as a child page.

5W VTX Performance

Noticed significantly better video transmission when landing in grass field south/south-east of skid pad.
- No degredation in signal quality observed at all
  - comparable to fading to b&w and/or losing signal on 800mW.

Model Performance

Autotune Performance

Auto-tune completed successfully twice
The results were slightly different both times, maybe due to voltage difference between the two batteries:

Overall, we learned a lot about how autotune works, and are pleasantly surprised to see it function effectively. The general process is as follows:

Takeoff, fly over a certain area in a guided flight mode such as AltHold, Loiter.
Invoke autotune flight mode from the RC Controller
Wait for autotune to complete. Once done, the drone will use original tunes and maintain flight mode that it was invoked from.
Switch out of autotune into preferred flight mode for testing the tune.
- If the tune is good → Switch back into autotune, land, and disarm. The values will save.
- If the tune is not good → Land immediately and disarm, the values will not save.

Some important notes that we learned:

“Autotune: failing to level” messages can be safely ignored. Drift is not super bad with GPS hold.

Sensor Health

Throughout the flight test, there were numerous messages about bad opflow, or lidar health. Our suspicion is that these warnings are caused by the tall grass and trees creating variable and moving terrain under the drone.

Battery Sag / Voltage

Batteries sagged as low as 12V overall (2v/cell) near the end of the flight. The drop-off was incredibly fast as batteries were sitting around 21V/cell when autotune ended.

The low battery voltage led to a “supposed” lost of thrust on motor 3, where it was at full throttle and unable to provide thrust to change the attitude of the drone. This rapid lost in thrust would also contribute to our harsher-than-normal landing.

Flight Tests

July 9 - Vanny for CV Auto Landings