Glider + Arduplane

Hi all,

I am working on a new project with fellow students/engineers with a hope to implement Cube and ArduPilot on an unpowered vehicle.

The vehicle is in a design phase. The idea is to have it dropped at certain altitude and then track back to the original location of launch. We know that it may not necessarily reach that location since it is just gliding, the goal is to track back to that location and when at certain altitude deploy a parachute.

So my questions are as following…

  1. Would such thing be possible with ArduPilot? The way we see it is that it’s just using ailerons and elevators to maintain certain attitude thus maintaining certain glide speed, and tracking to the home position. However since we had no previous contact with Cube and ArduPilot we don’t know how realistic this is?
  2. Would it be possible to further develop ArduPilot software to navigate by internal sensors instead of gps? So to have something like inertial navigation system. ArduPilot using accelerometers and gyros to create to calculate it’s position independently of GPS?

Thanks
Dusan

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