I am making an 8 rotor octo-copter with 2 of those rotors that tilt for forward flight. So my control effectors will be 8 rotor RPMS, two tilt commands (can be one shared one), and two elevators. I will use baro for altitude, but GPS for location and speed. I want to hold pitch and roll to mostly zero with control philosophy being rotate the aircraft in yaw to where you want to go and the go forward. From the ground station I want to be able to manually turn off a rotor or two while the autopilot maintains stability. I don’t need a camera onboard, but eventually will probably have one.
I plan to use a Pixhawk Cube, with Adrucopter-octa autopilot with maybe Mission Planner or UGCS control station software. I am open to all suggestions since I have not bought the hardware yet.
I am an aerospace engineer so I do have some knowledge of how to do this, I just don’t have that much time to devote to learning the I/O and interfaces. I have designed flight controls for manned aircraft for 30 years and currently work designing military drones for one of the large manufacturers. I would rather have someone in the LA or Ventura Counties of Cali as eventually we need to transfer hardware and would be nice to meet in person at least once.
G’day Pat,
I moved this to the “Jobs” category for you.
Cool project!
FYI most of the functionality required to do this is in the VTOL code (motor tilt for instance), and forward flight navigation might be better handled by the Plane controller but would need to be tested/simulated.