It’s been an amazingly fun, exciting and challenging two years developing new systems and technologies for the OBC. It’s a real success story of a group of hackers/makers coming together and creating something really awesome
Today was mostly spent doing systems tests, including a 4.5km datalink
test at Kingaroy airport (the 900MHz link worked quite well, the 5.8 GHz
link was coming in and out as expected), tuning the antenna tracker and
engine runs.
We also did some recon of the search area. It looks a little greener
this time around, but is still very much furrowed red soil.
The remaining members of our team arrived in the afternoon and we even
came across some other UAV teams around town.
Our house has now turned into a UAV workshop, with radio antennas, UAV
chassis and many cables scattered around the house!
Tomorrow will be the first official day of the OBC where we are very
much looking forward to meeting all the other teams
Today was the first day of the 2014 UAV Outback Challenge.
The day was mostly given over to the High School division, leaving us to
set up and meet the other teams. We had a great time chatting with them
and checking out their UAV systems.
In the end, 16 teams (and 50 people) turned up to the OBC.
Over half the teams are using the APM/Pixhawk flight controller that
Tridge has put so much work into, which was gratifying to see. Several
teams came up to us and thanked us for all the software, datasets and
documentation we’d published over the last two years.
The afternoon was spent in scrutineering (which we passed), where the
judges went over our airframe and some of the failsafes to ensure they
functioned correctly.
Afterwards, CompassUAV almost booked out an entire local pub for all of
the teams to have dinner/drinks in a more casual setting
Today was fairly quiet for us, as the second half of the high school division took up most of the day.
We had our team interview shortly before lunch, which went quite well.
The judges noted that most of the other teams had referenced CanberraUAV
and our open software/datasets in their own interviews!
The remaining teams had their scrutineering. A number of teams has
issues with SBAS on their GPS modules giving erratic readings. Tridge
(and others in the team) spent a lot of our time helping out the other
APM-based teams in switching off their SBAS (among many other issues).
As far as we’re aware, most teams have passed scrutineering, but we will
know for sure tomorrow.
We also met a 13 (?) year old kid who is a very accomplished programmer
and wanted to know more about how to modify/contribute to the APM
software. He is amazingly intelligent - he was easily able to keep up
with Tridge’s description of the APM parameters and structure! In order
to assist with his endeavours, we gave him one of our spare Pixhawks (as he only had an APM 2.5).
Tomorrow begins (at 6am!) the competition flights. CanberraUAV is second last on the list, so we don’t expect to be flying until late Thursday at the earliest.
Today was the first Search and Rescue Challenge flights at the OBC.
It was a fair bit quieter with the high school teams gone, but it did
give us all time to chat with the other competitors and make some new
friends.
Some people have been asking if there is something more than the “UAV
Challenge Live” feed on Facebook and Twitter. There is a live video
stream in the competitors tent, which shows the activity at the flight
line (where teams takeoff/land their UAVs and put their ground
stations). Since the UAVs fly up to 6km away, we don’t actually see much
of them except for the takeoff and landing sequence. Other than that,
we are reliant on the Facebook feed too!
On to today’s teams:
OpenUAS – This was their 3rd OBC. Their UAV made it to the search area but crashed shortly afterwards.
Condor – Had technical difficulties and elected to go to the back of the queue
Monash UAS – Flew very well and imaged the search area. Unfortunately
they could find Joe in the images. They landed successfully back at the
airport.
PerthUAV – Imaged most of the search area, but couldn’t find Joe. They landed successfully back at the airport.
Compass UAV – Imaged some of the search area, but couldn’t find Jo. They landed successfully back at the airport.
SwissFang – Crashed part way to the search area.
MelAvio – Had technical difficulties and elected to go to the back of the queue
Tomorrow starts with VAMUdeS.
At this stage, CanberraUAV will likely be flying Thursday afternoon or Friday morning.
CanberraUAV was due to fly today, but the competition was cut short by
strong winds and an incoming storm in the afternoon. We made it as far
as being sent out to the runway with the French team (Aetournos) around
midday. At that time the wind speed was above above the threshold for
running the OBC. After waiting for an hour, it was clear that the wind
was not calming down. Noting that the wind speed was still above the
threshold, the judges gave us the opportunity to fly there and then (as
we had a large and powerful airframe), or wait until Friday. After a
team discussion, we decided to wait until Friday.
We are currently second on the list of the three remaining competitors
and will most likely be flying early Friday morning around 7-9am. This
will depend on when the morning fog lifts though.
As for the other teams that flew:
SFWA - Found Joe on 3rd guess. Successfully dropped a bottle to him.
This is the first time this had occurred in the history of the OBC!
H2Joe - Crashed partway through the search pattern. The wings ended up
in a tree and the fuselage 5m away on the ground.
VAMUdeS - Found Joe. Dropped a bottle to him, but the bottle was outside
the 100m maximum distance from Joe.
Robota - Found Joe on 1st guess. Successfully dropped a bottle to him!
Note that the Judges will not be releasing the bottle distances from Joe.
It has been quite a historic day at the OBC with so many successful
missions! We are very impressed with the performance of the SFWA and
Robota teams.
The rest of the afternoon and the evening was spent with the SwissFang
team, discussing autopilot software development and demonstrating
software-in-the-loop simulation of APM.
Today was the final day of the OBC. 5 teams ended up flying:
Aetournos - One of the multicopter teams. Took off and made it to the search area. Something went wrong during the mission and it attempted to return. It was seen to be attempting to land and flipped over at 10m altitude. Heavy damage resulted.
CanberraUAV - Successfully found Joe and dropped a bottle to him with 2.6m accuracy. The takeoff and landing were a bit “exciting” and were not up to our usual standard.
Team Thunder - Successfully found Joe and dropped a bottle to him.
Condor - Took off and entered the search area. They suffered a camera failure and returned to the airport.
MelAvio - After some technical difficulties with their camera, took off and entered the search area. The suffered a datalink loss and returned to the airport. Their landing was quite heavy and damaged their nose section.
Rescue Robotics (the other multicopter team) pulled out due to technical issues.
After all the flying, we had the awards ceremony. The team leader of MelAvio (Pawel Wozniak) won the airmanship award and CanberraUAV won the Search & Rescue Challenge.
The rest of the afternoon was spent celebrating in a local pub with the Canadian team and we later moved to a nearby winery with the Swiss and a few local teams.
Tomorrow morning will be spent packing and we should all be back in Canberra sometime Sunday.
