Attendee count (max): 19
UTC2301 - autoland mission issues
- Doing scripted automatic landing loses what place you’re at in your mission
- I.e. if you switch to RTL then it briefly goes to RTL but then goes back to auto at nearest DO_LAND_START
- Multiple missions?
- Nominate missions starting at a waypoint number?
- QGC is monitoring the waypoint number to resume
- Switching back to auto should resume at the waypoint you entered RTL from?
- Should there be a “LAND” mode for Plane?
- I.e.e RTL -> LAND
- Switching back to AUTO would then go back to the correct auto index
- Adding a mode which is just the same as auto but named differently is a little on the nose?
- Current QGC methodology could break for a number of reasons
- Should we have a mavlink command for “resume mission”?
- There are many things that might need to be done
- E.g. airspeed calibration
- Solves the closely-spaced-waypoint issue
-
- Can’t really be based on internal state as QGC’s thing should work across reboots
- E.g. changed battery
- DLF: Generating a resume mission is quite complex. It’s not just go to a waypoint.
- [9:19 AM] (Channel) MdB: Don: I only outlined a primitive understanding of what you are doing
- [9:19 AM] (Channel) MdB: (basically set wp then set mode, idk if that is far though)
- Separate sequences for takeoff, landing and main mission?
- So to resume you would execute a takeoff and then jump into main mission
- [9:20 AM] (Channel) DLF: QGC Resume Mission genertion: https://github.com/mavlink/qgroundcontrol/blob/master/src/MissionManager/MissionManager.cc#L77
- Upload a separate landing sequence as a “landing mission”?
- Separate mode would be running these waypoints
- MAV_MISSION_TYPE?
- QGC watches WPs coming in
- Then waits for vehicle to leave auto
- Doesn’t necessarily use this as the one to go back to
- Rebuilds mission
- QGC has complex semantics
- E.g. backs up to survey transect and rebuilds camera triggering
- https://github.com/mavlink/qgroundcontrol/blob/master/src/MissionManager/MissionManager.cc#L77
- Works well in practise
- Except for autoland != 0 with ardupilot
- Copter works
- Does this on the ground
- GCS doesn’t have a full idea of what transitions have happened
- E.g. missing mode changes
- E.g. missing waypoints
- Don thinks the vehicle should be able to handle the resume
- But it doesn’t currently
- So he does it in QGC
-
- [9:37 AM] (Channel) Luis_Vale: I frequently use QGC for that type of missions and the continue is a life saver
- Hand-launch with an autoland
- TWO issues
- Resuming mission after starting DO_LAND_START sequence
- Not reporting that we’re actually doing an RTL, not doing our actual mission
- Use Flight substages?
- Useful for takeoff?
-
- Concern reporting mode=RTL during autoland?
- Will GCS display trajectories and waypoints and the like?
- MP has a different display depending on RTL vs AUTO
- [9:46 AM] (Channel) MdB: OH!
- [9:46 AM] (Channel) MdB: right that breaks
- [9:46 AM] (Channel) MdB: becauser it can’t draw at nav target
- [9:46 AM] (Channel) MdB: no, no it wont
- [9:46 AM] (Channel) MdB: that doesn’t map
- [9:46 AM] To Weekly devcall: Why can’t it report the nav target?!
- [9:46 AM] (Channel) MdB: peter: it does, but everything based on mission current stops
- [9:46 AM] To Weekly devcall: Why can’t we report a mission current?
- [9:47 AM] (Channel) MdB: because RTL’s aren’t in the list
- Race condition
- Updated heartbeat with changed mode after sending a mission current
- Wait for second heartbeat
- So mission current must be bracketed
- Mavlink2 extension for mission current to give the flight mode?
- [9:52 AM] (Channel) MdB: Can I get stages on MISSION_CURRENT if we extend it?
- Do we just change our mode reporting rather than actually change modes?
- Switch to rtl then back to auto?
- Switch back to previous waypoint
- Wp set in modes other than rtl are ordinarily ignored
- Should we continue to ignore them?!
- Change to auto then do you wp set?
- Do-jump may put you back into auto
- Linear landing sequences would report RTL
- NE: Would be kind of cool to have a AUTO_RESTART parameter that looked for the previous waypoint (in auto mode) rather than the next
- Summary:
- Report RTL during RTL autolands
- Revert to reporting auto after various bits and pieces happen
- Not sure what goes into Dataflash
- Not sure about loiter stuff
- [10:00 AM] (Channel) TomPittenger: I’ve tuned out a little, can someone update the issue with an update? I’ll remove the devcall label https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/issues/8060
-
UTC2401 - autoland mission issues
- HIL GPS
- Scaling altitude wrong
- https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/issues/7396
- HIL_GPS should be marked as deprecated
- Change not going to affect any real vehicles
- Actually, ROS on real vehicles uses this
- Change the XML?
- Need to see what PX4 is doing
- People are probably working around
- ROS in cm
- We treat it as if is in mm
- MdB will fix
- And put stuff in the release notes
UTC2405 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/7970
- Specify compass devids
- Fails travis because SITL sets driver id to zero
- SITL can be changed to not use zero
- Set ids from GCS after boot
- What is this PR trying to accomplish?!
- Force check to ensure compasses are present
- Fetch compass ids and check if they’re not right?
- Protecting against what?!
- Users redoing compass calibrations when they’ve got the wrong compasses?
- External compasses that don’t come up?
- Maybe have a minimum-number-of-compasses-available required for arming?
- [10:11 AM] (Channel) MdB: (would be useful to me, but I’d rather not be specifying ID’s in advance, min count is much more straightforward)
- Falling through to other compasses would cause problems here!
- Use offboard-auth instead?
UTC2415 - more flight modes
- https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/issues/8031
- Weekly devcall: I was thinking we could have a paraemeter which specified the number of flight modes required…
- [10:16 AM] To Weekly devcall: Then just divide more finely
- Tridge thinks we have a separate flight-mode-channel-bank switch
- If it is non-zero then we use a separate bank
- Vtol switches on one bank, fixed wing on another?
- [10:16 AM] (Channel) MdB: (although I’d be happy with fewer momdes actually)
- [10:16 AM] (Channel) MdB: (I’m always trying to keep my unused modes mapped reasonably incase I get a bad packet)
- [10:18 AM] (Channel) Buzz: maybe you could use a three position switch as “up” “centre” and “down” to cycle through an arbitrary number of flightmodes that way.
- [10:18 AM] (Channel) LV: so basically killing another option channel
- [10:18 AM] (Channel) Buzz: ( that would work great if your TX has visual/audible feedback for the ‘mode’ you are currently in. )
- [10:19 AM] (Channel) MdB: FLTMODE_CH should be done away with…
- Why not use one channel?
- Lots of documentation already out there
- Dividing range equally problem?
- Would have to expose flightmodes 1 to 12 all the time as parameters
- How finely do you allow division?
- Parameters than change number of parameters - you still need to have those parameters
- Reprogramming would be nasty
- Luis: every channel is important!
- Use a mask?
- Aux switches can set modes on Copter
- More advanced GCS/transmitter things are coming
- We’ll come back to this topic - discuss?
- MdB: I want fewer modes as an option just to point it out
-
UTC2431 - clang++
- Static analysis!
- Works for everyone!
- Doesn’t play well with waf
- Why not with waf?
- Doesn’t pick the cxx options up appropriately
- Somewhere we’re not taking the system cxx flags
- Use scan-build printenv to see variables changing
UTC2437 - GSoC
- 58 proposals are final!
- Several not-of-high-quality
- Need to work out max/min number of slots
- April 17th to make decision
- Have a meeting after evaluating projects
- To determine number of slots
- And look at evaluations
- Last year we had a spreadsheet we filled in
- We have a similar spreadsheet
UTC2441 - d-shot
- Now logging lots of telemetry
- Join ChibiOS gitter channel to help out!
- Mavlink message to report to GCS?
- Lots of information
- 8 + 1 motors
- Each is 5 fields of information
- Send subset?
- Separate messages for each ESC?
- Or rpm1,rpm2,rpm3,rpm4
- Instance numbers instead?
- esc.instance
- Esc.voltage
- Only MAVProxy would come close to graphing this
- [10:46 AM] (Channel) FF: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/7831 same issue regarding DF log with UAVCAN ESC
- Syncing issues with multiple issues
- Much discussion about how best to transmit the messages
- May have the ability to replace a battery monitor
UTC 2450 Rover
- Rover-3.2.3-rc2 is in beta. Rover-3.2.3-rc1/rc2 ready for beta testing!
- Once Rover-3.2.3 becomes the official release Randy hopes we can start Rover-3.3.0 beta testing which will include lots of new features including simple avoidance, geofence, pivot turn improvements, EKF with vision-position message support for use with ROS
Copter
UTC 2455 Copter
Final Comments
- Discussions about how to align Plane 3.9 release with the copter and rover
- Partners’ meeting is tomorrow
- Craig not available April 30 & May 7 dev meetings