2024-02-03 Pegasus Efficiency Flight Test

Sections for requesting team to fill out:

  • Admin preparation

  • Test Cards / Test Plan

  • Mandatory Attendees

Sections for flight test coordinator to fill out:

  • Flightline team

  • Location

  • Status

  • Drone

Sections for flightline team to fill out:

  • EFS to fill out Card #1, #2, #3 (Tracking Antenna, Obstacle Avoidance)

Admin Preparation

Requested By

@Anthony Luo

Sub-Team Review

(To be checked once reviewed by sub-team representative)

Mechanical
Electrical
EFS
Autonomy
Operations

Date of Request

2024-01-22

Goal Summary

  • Airspeed / efficiency data for Pegasus

  • Tracking antenna tests on Pegasus if avail

Status?

Waiting for Sub-Team Review

Desired Airframe

Pegasus

Location + Time

WrestRC

Testplan - to be filled out by requesting team

Note:

Test #1: Autotuning peggy

Procedure

Goals / Objectives

Failure criteria

arm disarm a couple times on the ground.

take off, check directions are correct when commanding the drone.

Check that all channels command the drone as intended - pitch roll yaw, arm/disarm, flight modes

anything commands incorrectly

arm disarm shaky

transmission not working for any reason

  • LQ < 95 (when idle)

  • TPWR > 25 (when idle)

Set parameter in Ardupilot for the intended axis of tuning. (increment these one at a time as each axis is complete). Save the parameters and do not delete them by accident.

Tune the drone in 1 axis.

Repeat this again for the second axis.

drone mechanically fails midair, electrically fails midair, loses connection to the ground station, clips an object, gets too close to a person/car.

Some situations remedied by flying drone back towards the center of its autotune. Some require landing and restarting autotune. Some require rebuilding the drone

Tuning steps:

  1. Takeoff in loiter, controls check

  2. Move drone to clear area with at least 10-15m radius

  3. Engage autotune mode

  4. Wait for “Autotune Success” or “Autotune Complete” message on GCS

  5. Bring drone back to visually comfortable range

  6. Switch to loiter, controls check.

  7. switch back to autotune (applies new tune)

    1. if tune UNDESIRABLE, land in loiter, disarm. Tune will be rejected

    2. if tune desirable, land and disarm in Autotune mode. Tune will be saved.

Get a satisfactory tune

 

Switch batteries after axis 2 is tuned successfully. IF there is enough battery left (100% certain) continue flying on the same ones.

Replacing the batteries

-

Set same parameter to tune the final remaining axis. Save the parameters if successful.

Tune the drone’s final axis

same as above

 

Note: Will not use tracking antenna

Test #1: Airspeed 6-18 m/s intervals

Procedure

Goals / Objectives

Failure criteria

Check battery %. If we did not swap batteries for the tuning, swap now.

Confirm we have enough battery power

No batteries of satisfactory charge

Plot a path using ardupilot. ~ 100-200 m long.

Set the auto speed on peggy to be 8 m/s

Fly auto mission along path.

 

 

Repeat on the same plotted path, after circling back. (Enter from the SAME DIRECTION). do this at 12 m/s

 

Batteries dead

Drone otherwise mechanically/electrically unstable

Drone not physically capable of flying that fast

Repeat at 14 m/s

 

 

Repeat at 16 m/s

 

 

Repeat at 18 m/s

 

see above

 

Note: complete this last, if there is additional battery. If not, don’t fly

Setting drag coeff for propellers

Procedure (ungraciously ripped straight from https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/airspeed-estimation.html )

Goals / Objectives

Failure criteria

  1. take off in a low wind conditions in a wide open space

  2. Optionally set LOG_DISARMED = 1 and LOG_REPLAY = 1 to allow post flight tuning with Replay

  3. Arm and takeoff in Loiter

  4. Switch to AltHold and let the vehicle drift downwind

  5. Yaw the vehicle so the nose faces into the wind and apply full forward pitch until the vehicle has finished accelerating upwind

  6. Release the pitch stick and allow the vehicle to decelerate and then drift back to the starting line

  7. Reposition the vehicle to a comfortable position

  8. Yaw the vehicle 90 deg (e.g. clockwise) to the wind and apply full left roll stick until the quad has finished accelerating. Release the stick and allow the vehicle to again decelerate and drift back downwind to the starting line

  9. Reposition the vehicle to a comfortable position

  10. Repeat step 8 but with the vehicle facing backwards into the wind (pilot should pull back on the pitch stick to accelerate into the wind)

  11. Repeat step 8 but with the vehicle’s right side facing into the wind (pilot should apply full right roll to accelerate into the wind)

  12. Download the onboard logs for analysis (SEE LINKS)

push into the wind on every lateral axis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Necessary Preparation

Mechanical

Pegasus cleared to fly (mechanically)
sensor mount ready
Motors + frame rigid
Cabin is mounted
EFS to set the surface area in Ardupilot of the front of the drone - get surface area from Mech CAD

Electrical

Pegasus cleared to fly (electrically)
harnessing secure

Embedded Flight Software

Autonomy

Attendees

Name

Phone # (opt)

Sub-team

Driving

Role

Name

Phone # (opt)

Sub-team

Driving

Role

@Megan Spee

 

Director

toyota prius

FT director/pilot

 

 

 

3-274 Caravan

 

 

 

 

3-196 Rav4

 

@Georgia Vachon Westerlund

 

Ops

 

 

@Nathan Green

 

Mech

 

 

@Yuchen Lin

 

EFS

 

 

@Sam Zhang

 

EFS

 

 

@Tim Gu

 

EFS

 

 


Flightline Team

Name

Phone #

Role

Reason

Name

Phone #

Role

Reason

@Megan Spee

 

Pilot

je suis

@Nathan Green / @Yuchen Lin

 

GSO

 

 

 

 

 

Pre-Flight Preparation

Checklists

Incident Procedures

Flight Test Timeline

Date/Time

Action

Notes

Date/Time

Action

Notes

7:30/8

Start charging batteries

4x 6s 5000mah (pegasus)

 

9:30

Briefing @ WARG Bay

 

9:50

Final flight inspections

 

10:00

Begin loading vehicles

 

10:30

Arrival at Flight Test Location

 

10:50

Flight Test Pegasus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12

Packup

 

 

Lunch

 

1:00

Debrief

 

 

<>

 


DEBRIEF

  • Timeline:

    • Leaving the bay: 10:16 AM

    • Arrived at flight test location: 10:35 AM

    • Take-off time (autotune 1): 10:41 AM

    • Take-off time (autotune 2): 10:46 AM

    • Take-off time (autotune 3): 10:58 AM

    • Take-off time (air speed 1 - 14m/s): 11:09 AM

    • Take-off time (air speed 2 - 16m/s): 11:18 AM

    • Take-off time (air speed 3 - 18m/s): 11:23 AM

    • Take-off time (air speed 4 - 20m/s): 11:26 AM

    • Take-off time (air speed 5 - 20m/s): 11:28 AM

    • Take-off time (wind test): 11:39 AM

  •  

 

Analysis

  • Pegasus did not actually get up to speed on the 160-180 meter straight flight (during the 20 m/s test).

Fastest we can go (demonstrated here, at least:) is 18m/s, giving us 2.7778 minutes per lap at competition (3000 meter lap).

Batteries would die before this.

Theoretically, at 8 m/s, it can fly the entire 30 minute window, and complete 6.25 laps.

  • no point flying slower thana 8m/s in future tests - this is the lower bound for how much time we have

Seems to be more efficient when you go slower.

will need to test again on a longer flight path (500m) to see actual max speed given a 20 m/s command. At 20 m/s command speed this time, did not finish accelerating.

 

What we want to get from logs:

 

Also need to fix the LTE module connectivity issue.

Theories

LTE failure

  • interference from motors/ESCs

  • orientation of antenna

@Nathan Green troubleshooting this by testing signal strength with different cables, etc