2023-10-17 Ardupilot Lidar q/a

• the lidar that is supported by ardu is very expensive and is not as good for outdoor use

• we need to find and source a lidar that is good for atleast 12 m and works well outside, with atleast 360 degrees of coverage

• write a driver for this to work with ardu

• the current outdoor, ardu supported lidar costs 600 dollars

• in the future wed like cheaper options so we can afford to buy and use multiple (can only buy 1 lidar for now)

• ardupilot has a list of supported lidars, we want to just add support for more models

  • Rangefinders (landing page) — Copter documentation

  • list is not up to date ^

  • wed want to add support for another omnidirectional proximity lidar

• tasks

  • source a lidar and give details to anni so he can coordinate with other subteams [ Nov 3rd ]

    • design matrix

      • we list the lidars

      • we find the data

      • other subteams can make their own weights and find their top 3 choices based on that

      • we all discuss

    • show range, outdoor use, weight, current draw,

    • ideally around 200 CAD (but less is better)

    • max wed consider 600 CAD (this is the current cost that we pay)

    • HAS to have good outdoor capabilities

    • absolute min is 4-6, ideal is 12m, no real upper limit

  • write a driver for it [End of the term]

    • make a fresh stm project with a nucleo, get a POC working

    • integrate into the ardu codebase

      • big codebase, not as much support, will take time to understand

  • test the driver [End of the term]

  • PR into ardu main [ feb-marchish ]

    • flight tests needed [april]

      • will buy some nucleo stm32 H7 for this, or we can use stm32f405

• if this is done before comp, there is a non zero chance it flies if the main lidar has issues or gets broken etc

New priorities

1. Gemini

2. Ardupilot Lidar support

3. CAN sensor board & RTK support

4. other random projects?

   1. lighting control

   2. OSD

   3. support for individual sensors