Hey guys! Does anyone have any idea on how to get two flight controllers such as the Navio2 to communicate with each other? I am trying to build two quad-copters that will basically need to fly in unison. To do that I need to get the flight controllers to communicate with each other basically making one the master and the other the slave. Anyone have any idea on how to do that?
http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/follow-mode.html
Follow mode basically does what you’re after. Wifi would be the easiest network to set up. Make sure the two copters have different system ID’s in mavlink.
Good luck!
Thanks for the help! Really appreciate it! Do you know how accurate the distance measurement is? Thing is, the drones will connected to each other physically via a ball and socket or some moveable joint. Therefore it can’t withhold to much yanking on the joint otherwise it’ll pull apart.
Thanks again for the help!
Cool project!
Absolute position estimate accuracy varies depending on the source, but if the two vehicles are identical hardware wise, the relative positions should be quite precise. How well an offset can be maintained will depend a lot on the performance of the copter.
I think get sitl up and running first, then progressive flight test, is going to be the best way for you to get a reliable answer to your question.
@rmackay9 @peterbarker may be able to provide better guidance.
Most GPS’s absolute accuracy is about 1m so independent GPSs on each vehicle will likely not be accurate enough to keep them perfectly flying together. An L2 RTK GPS (like the Septentrio) might work but they are very expensive.
What’s required is really a very accurate relative position. A large airplane manufacturing company in Europe approached me about a year ago about developing something that sounds similar to what you’re attempting. You don’t work with them do you? In any case, I put together some ideas during that discussion about ways it could be done. It’s not super simple though I’m afraid. It would likely require either a vision based position estimation (a bit like our precision landing code) or perhaps DWM1000 (ultra wide band transmitter/receiver) like Pozyx.