Nose cam

It was time to fly the Canon TX1, finally. Figured out an ingenious way to mount the camera on the nose, shifting components starboard and aft to balance it, fabricating a sheet metal angle to tilt it. the Autopilot was in attitude directed mode. The pilot controls target attitude.

Autopilot + nose cam (0 min 52 sec)

The result was horrible vibration. At least she easily lifted the electronics and the camera.

With the extra 1.25" for electronics, a skid cam is more challenging. It's more like a pendulum. Been leaning towards doing it out of foam.

Recall 8 months were focused on holding orientation. Then we got orientation stable enough to work on holding position. Wanting more wind resistance, it's time to look at orientation hold again. Obviously this chapter isn't over. Even flying in directed orientation mode, it is easy 2 lose control as orientation drifts and autopilot searches for the target orientation.

Anecdotes lead to faster servos & smarter algorithms being required for better orientation. There's patent 6751529 on neural networks for orientation and some notes from Trammel Hudson on requiring faster servos

http://robots.net/person/hudson/

Blocked by patents and lack of money, may end up with an assisted autopilot. The autopilot controls most aspects, but can be assisted by human input when it loses control.

BTW, Neural Robotics uses a 10Hz WAAS corrected GPS from Novatel. Vicacopter's no-wind hover is probably the limit of what 1Hz GPS + this size airframe can do.