Does UAV really mean UAV?

[spicoli82]

I've been mostly researching and building for FPV. I just stumbled across this forum and I have just one question...

Do you guys really build UAV's that can fly to GPS waypoints by themselves even after they get past the range of the RC transmitter?

[Zor]

I've been mostly researching and building for FPV. I just stumbled across this forum and I have just one question...

Do you guys really build UAV's that can fly to GPS waypoints by themselves even after they get past the range of the RC transmitter?

Hello spicoli82,

An interesting question.
Once a model plane is beyond the range of the RC transmitter, it is usually out of sight or just a dot in the sky that its attitude is unknown and consequently out of pilot control.

My interpretation of UAV is not "Uncontrolable Airplane Vehicle" .

I understand the actual meaning is "Unmanned Aerial Vehicles".

Now we have to play with the interpretation of "Unmanned".
If controlling our models with an RC link is considered as being "manned" then a UAV would have to have its own auto-pilot and navigational facility that would have to be fed into the UAV in some form like a computer that would have a program and some interface to the controls and the auto-pilot.

It sure is an interesting challenge and no doubt quite expensive. The military had it done so it is feasable.

Anyone for the challenge?

Then we could nervously wait to see if the model will come back to us. Wow, there it is on final approach. Do we take over controls for landing or let the auto-pilot do it?

What a lot of fun that would be ! ! !

Zor

[zlite]

Zor, "nervously wait to see if the model will come back to us" is EXACTLY what we do.

To answer the question, some of us here do indeed fly planes that navigate by GPS waypoints outside the range of RC (see DIYDrones (http://diydrones.com)). They are real UAVs, in that sense. Most if not all of us land and take off manually, however.

[Sgt_Ric]

I agree wholeheartedly... DIY Drones is a fabulous place to experiment with bringing the costs of autonomous flight "down to earth".

Autonomous flight equipt has been available for years to not only the military, but through companies such as Micropilot, who specialize in non-miltary autopilots, camera platforms, ground control software, and downlinks.

And, yes, their equipt will allow a UAV to takeoff and land by itself autonomously.

Their site is http://micropilot.com

[RaptorAP]

Funny you should bring up Micropilot, that is the worst autopilot ever IMO, even engineers have trouble programming it. However its existence is the reason so many other "Easier to program" autopilots came out, for one the PDC-10 and Pico-pilot from Dave Perry and now the EZI-NAV
from Dave Jones at AUAV. (www.auav.net)
Just my 0.02
Mike

[Mark Harris]

We use our DragonOSD's return to home feature (autopilot) to fly up to end then beyond the range of the r/c signal regularly. Checkout Dean's autopilot as well, thats more than capable of flying well beyond r/c range.