Cloud Cap Technologies Piccolo personal experience?

[danstrider]

Hey everyone,

I know that the Piccolo is out of most hobby UAVer's budget, but does anyone have personal experience with the Piccolo? I'm in the process of searching for a new autopilot and trying to get good background on the Piccolo. I hear great things, but nothing speaks volumes like a personal story.

How hard was it to integrate?
How hard was the tuning process?
How would you rate the ease of gaining access to the telemetry?
How would you rate the user programmability?

Thanks for the input!

Dan

www.cloudcaptech.com is the Piccolo website.

[kd7ost]

Wow Dan,

Thats high end stuff. You'll be the envy of us all. I know Aerosonde uses Cloudcap guidance but don't know if it's the Piccolo. If you get it, let us know how it goes.

Thats like going to your buddies house and saying, I think I might get a Ferrari.

Or to your flying buddies and saying, I think I'm gonna get an F-16.

Well, sorta like that. ;-)

Dan

[djklein21]

Picalo pilot is te best on the market in its price range. I speak from personal experiances as well as witnessing its install in many commercial UAVs. It is solely used in Aerosondse planes.

[djklein21]

BTW I have no connection with Cloud cap, just a little excited to see some discussion about some "real UAVs"

[radiohound]

Just to put it in perspective, what is the price of the piccolo, or piccolo II?

[chrisgood]

I have been responsible for integrating the Piccolo into two different planes for work and we will be adding it to a couple more in the next year. It was almost an effortless experience. It has everything in a single package; datalink; imu; avionics. It all works right out of the box, and if you every have any problems with it (unlikely), the crew at Cloud Cap is very friendly and helpful. We were begging Cloud Cap to release the Piccolo II for choppers for a UAV helicopter project so we wouldn't have to use a different chopper avionics package that I won't name. That avionics did finally work, but required A LOT more time and effort to integrate correctly.

I don't work for Cloud Cap but have been very happy with their product. The Crista IMU head is a neat little peice of hardware too.

The pricelist I picked up at AUVSI two weeks ago shows this:

PiccoloPlus Autopilot $6000
Piccolo II Autopilot - fixed wing version $7500
Piccolo Ground Station $7500

They told me the chopper version of the Piccolo II is now available, but it is not listed on the pricelist. It is a bit more than the fixed wing version; it has an external magnetometer for heading info.

To answer danstrider:
----------------------
How hard was it to integrate?
Easiest avionics package I have worked with, bar none.

How hard was the tuning process?
Required some time, the HILSIM that comes with the system is a big help; you need to be aware of how Cloud Cap runs its Kalman Filters and keeps track of its enery equations. We saw one weird thing during a flight test and when I asked Cloud Cap about it, they sent an explanation that matched perfectly to what we saw. I had not told them exactly what happened but a general description - their explanation fit perfectly and resultant characteristics made sense once I had one tiny piece of information.

How would you rate the ease of gaining access to the telemetry?
It records all data to raw data files during all communications, and the data is available real-time in very easy to use GUIs.

How would you rate the user programmability?
PID gains adjustable on the fly, inner and outer loops individually tunable, partial autopilot modes were completed at our request. The system comes with a programmer developer's kit if you want to make your own ground station. I have not added payload control to the avionics, but the avionics comes with extra discrete outputs, servo outputs, and a serial interface that can be programmed any way you want.

Chris Good
Test Manager
Shadow UAV

[Myron]

Hey Guys,


We have been talking to these guys a bit... Anyone use this one?

http://www.procerusuav.com/Gallery%20HTML/

[kd7ost]

Without consent I'm gonna plug Chris Good's work.
Here's his home site and his job site. Enjoy. Nice stuff here guys.

http://www.shadowtuav.com/
http://www.chrisgood.com/rcplanes/

Dan

[danstrider]

Man thanks for all the great input! I'm glad that everyone is so encouraging!

The Piccolo is definitely the front runner in my search and it seems to be good software to accompany well-proven hardware. Since hardware is still only 10% of the overall battle, I'm really interested in how much control over the navigator I can have. Namely, I would like to set up no-fly-zones and have the Piccolo try to stay within the flyable area. I understand the path planner is internal unless you pay for the source code; the workaround I've seen is a seperate Piccolo-interface-computer to help the Piccolo with its waypoint locations to achieve the desired effects. At this point though, you've doubled the hardware by adding a complete second computer. What have others seen as alternate solutions for this type situation?

I believe most of my imagery payload control will be done seperately by an embedded payload control computer, but it's good to know the Piccolo has extra i/o and payload control options. One thing I know my payload computer will need is the telemetry data (altitude, GPS location, Euler angles, and a couple others). I have thought to place the payload computer inline with the telemetry output and just watch the data stream by before it goes to the radio modem. However, if the payload computer crashes, this data line is severed. Can I push the telemetry data out one of the extra i/o lines? Any other options for this?


One last doozey. What experience have people had with Piccolo takeoffs and landings? The world is moving toward launch-and-recover systems and I don't think manual takeoff/landing will cut it anymore. I was scared to try auto-takeoffs with my old autopilot system; any votes of confidence with the Piccolo?


I spoke with Cloud Cap earlier this week and they are working on making a public release of the Piccolo II heli system hopefully within a year. It works already as I understood it from them, but the public release means documentation, cleaning up code, etc. Hopefully before AUVSI 2006... maybe they'll have the mini pan-tilt system available then too. Talk about a turn-key solution.


Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep updates floating around as I have them!

Dan

[danstrider]

Myron: I took a look at the Procerus autopilot. Nice looking hardware. For my purposes at the moment, being able to create controllers in Simulink and pump them over to the Piccolo with a button-push has me won over. Keeping the Kestrel in mind though for some other projects :-)

Dan

[djklein21]

Did you get to talk too Mark and the rest of the guys at CloudCap at the AUVSI conference? They are really helpful. Also the Acrturus on display (another booth) had video of an autonomous launch and recovery of his Picalo controlled aircraft. It is belly landed though. The picalo auto pilot sets a shallow lide angle untill the plane touched down, no flare. works for belly landed planes though. At the AUVSI student UAV competition following the conference, I witnessed the University of Texas Arlington do a completely autonomous takeoff and landing using a micropilot mp2028. It uses an ultrasonic altimeter to get accurate altitude once the aircraft is within 16 feet of the ground. Micropilot sponsors the competition and gives a 90 percent discount to the student teams who compete. Out of 11 aircraft 9 used the micropilot and only the university of Texas used it sucessfully. Micropilot is really good to deal with, but no one in indusrty has had much good to say about their system.

[chrisgood]

I have not done it, but was told that the current Piccolo GCS will interface with FalconView, the default mission planner for the military. You can give that a try for more involved planning with restricted areas.

Chris

[danstrider]

I've heard of FalconView and seen it installed in a Pioneer ground station. Trying to locate a copy for non-commercial use may be a challenge though...

"Where can I download FalconView?
There are no publicly accessible Internet sites for downloading FalconView. NGA provides sites for downloading the NGA version of FalconView on DoD-specific networks (SIS, INTELINK, and INTELINK-S) for DoD customers who have access to these networks."

I don't suppose DoD could sponsor a college group to work with the software; Georgia Tech developed the software ... I could live without needing access to the source code.

Dan

FalconView homepage: http://www.falconview.org/default.htm

[danstrider]

Did you get to talk to Mark and the rest of the guys at CloudCap at the AUVSI conference?
Yeah, I yacked with a few of them. Nice guys.

Also the Acrturus on display (another booth) had video of an autonomous launch and recovery of his Piccolo controlled aircraft. It is belly landed though. The piccolo auto pilot sets a shallow lide angle untill the plane touched down, no flare. works for belly landed planes though.
I got a copy of their CD. The landings were pretty good for computer control, just came right down without a problem. Can Piccolo be set up for more conventional landings with a flare (i.e. for aircraft with landing gear)?

At the AUVSI student UAV competition following the conference, I witnessed the University of Texas Arlington do a completely autonomous takeoff and landing using a micropilot MP2028. It uses an ultrasonic altimeter to get accurate altitude once the aircraft is within 16 feet of the ground.
My team (NC State) also used the Micropilot at this competition, though we didn't trust the MP enough to try an auto takeoff or landing.

Out of 11 aircraft 9 used the micropilot and only the university of Texas used it sucessfully. Micropilot is really good to deal with, but no one in indusrty has had much good to say about their system.
Others did use it successfully, just UTA was the only group to complete a fully autonomous flight including takeoff and landing.

I may have met you at the competition and just don't know your RC Groups handle. I was with the NC State team (white shirts, trailer, big red Senior Telemasters). I don't suppose you wondered over and talked with us?

Dan

[djklein21]

I may have met you at the competition and just don't know your RC Groups handle. I was with the NC State team (white shirts, trailer, big red Senior Telemasters). I don't suppose you wondered over and talked with us?

Dan


I did, I was the observer from the University of California at San Diego.

I doen't want to say anything negative about the micropilot system, I just want to say that I have heard nothing but terrific things about the CloudCap system. Many commercial companies use it extensivly and sweare by it.

I must say I was very impressed by your presentaion at the AUVSI student UAV competition and looking forward to your award winning paper.

Good Luck in your future career

[dian]

http://www3.uta.edu/faculty/reyes/AVL/Default.htm

[Bg~]

you need to be aware of how Cloud Cap runs its Kalman Filters and keeps track of its enery equations.

Could you elaborate a little more on this?

I'm a grad student at Penn State putting together 4 Kadet Seniors with piccolos and an onboard computers to all fly cooperatively (i'm doing the control stuff). I'm interested in what you mean in you kalman filter comment, as I'm always playing with the gains.


------


BTW, the piccolo is -very- easy to set up and work with. My only complaint is the user interface. Everything is on separate tabs; I would like something with a main map view and command input/telemetry in resizable floating windows (or somethign like that ;) ). I saw Falcon View at AUVSI as well, very cool.

Cloudcap also sells the autopilot/GCS source code, however its $35k :(

[djklein21]

Could you elaborate a little more on this?

I saw Falcon View at AUVSI as well, very cool.

Cloudcap also sells the autopilot/GCS source code, however its $35k :(

As far as I know Cloud cap gives away the source code If you buy 2 or more picalo set ups (educational break)

[Bg~]

As far as I know Cloud cap gives away the source code If you buy 2 or more picalo set ups (educational break)

!!!!

Where did you hear this? The aero department here at Penn State bought two complete systems.

[danstrider]

I really doubt djklein on that one. There has to be more info back there, like a partnership btw Cloud Cap and the group you know of.

I'm looking into the Piccolo with full force now. Thanks for all the suggestions. Will report back only with updates :-)

Dan

[4c3m4n]

Piccolo II is used on the latest Aerosonde Mk4.1 - it's very good but the 900Mhz radio modem is limitted in range and prone to jamming...however you can always intergrate a different UHF communication to your need as well as SatComm.