Research on Paparazzi UAV Blog

Flight Campaign at Barbados Island

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 10:35:30 +0000

Enac UAV lab have participated to an atmospheric research flight campaign at the Barbados Island for three weeks from end of January 2020.

This was part of a project called NEPHELAE in collaboration with the French National Meteorological Research Center from Météo-France and the robotics lab LAAS-CNRS.

NEPHELAE is atmospheric science driven (with a focus on cloud microphysical processes) via robotic technological development (adaptive, model-guided path planning in a UAV fleet). Essentially, by merging the state-of-the-art technology, the observational tools for conducting research in atmospheric science will take a quantum leap forward. At the same time, we are using this novel approach to address decades-old questions on entrainment and the onset of precipitation that have been limited by traditional observing methods.

UAV Network Intrusion Detection with Wavelet-based Signature Analysis

Thu, 21 Jun 2018 14:29:55 +0000

This is a first step of a hybrid IDS method based on the analysis of spectral traffic and a robust controller / observer for the estimation of anomalies in UAV networks. This module is currently designed to observe the traffic between the drones and the Paparazzi GCS. It provides a statistic signature of the traffic which can later be used to determine the nature of the traffic. The module is tested in face of a DoS attack and the results are very promising!

Opening ENAC's flying arena

Fri, 15 Jun 2018 21:25:04 +0000

Since the beginning of the year, ENAC (French Civil Aviation University) is equipped with a new facility dedicated to UAVs research and education.

The building includes a flying arena with a size around 10x10x10 meters, several workshops for mechanics, electronic, composite, 3D printing and storage. It also includes a teaching room for automatic control and the student’s robotics club.

The official opening was the 17th of May in the presence of the French minister of transport. Several demonstrations have been performed, all of them showing the formidable capabilities of Paparazzi: distributed formation flight, hybrid vehicles, on-board image processing, efficient adaptive control and autonomous navigation.

Pilot a super rotorcraft!

Sat, 02 Dec 2017 18:59:57 +0000

So far all my results with rotorcraft were in simulation… until now! In this experiment, performed at TU-Delft (thanks Ewoud Smeur!), a team of four rotorcraft behaves as a single unit. The proved stability properties of the whole system allows for applications such as collaborative transportation of objects.

If you want to know the mathematical aspects and why this setup works, then check my thesis.

A wiki entry explaining how you can have the same setup running employing Paparazzi will be available soon!

Multi-UAV capabilities

Sat, 12 Aug 2017 06:33:08 +0000

Video done at ENAC (Toulouse) showing some capabilities of Paparazzi for controlling multiple fixed-wing aircraft.

We have already a wiki entry explaining how to implement the circular formations.

First flights of the hybrid vehicle Cyfoam with Chimera board

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 13:09:11 +0000

The Cyfoam is a hybrid vehicle developed at ENAC Drone Lab. The aircraft is a foam, with a 3D printed fuselage, version of the composite-made Cyclone.

The vehicle is powered by the new autopilot board Chimera! which executes the control algorithms developed by Ewoud from Delft MAV Lab. We are currently aiming at a total autonomous mode, e.g., auto take off and auto landing.

Flying Parrot's Disco aircraft with Paparazzi

Fri, 24 Feb 2017 21:40:45 +0000

The Disco from Parrot is a fixed-wing aircraft designed for FPV with all the feature already available on their Bebop2, plus some extra things, like airspeed sensor, SBUS input and PWM outputs.

The autopilot itself is all integrated in a box called C.H.U.C.K. and it allows nice and easy flights with the SkyController2 and the Cockpitglasses, connected via Wifi.

Just like the Bebop and ARDrones, it is now possible to fly this drone using Paparazzi. Just connect to the plane, upload your code and you’re ready to go! Here is the video of the maiden flight:

Circle formations of fixed-wing aircraft

Tue, 21 Feb 2017 10:18:59 +0000

We have recently developed and tested a formation control algorithm for fixed-wing aircraft in Paparazzi at ENAC. The position of an arbitrary number of vehicles can be controlled in a circular path. In fact, we are not restricting ourselves to circles but to any closed orbit, such as ellipses, thanks to the guidance vector field that guides the planes. The algorithm is under more tests, but it should be soon available for the general public. It is quite easy to employ, the user has to declare only the IDs of the planes, the communication topology (neighbors’ relationships) and the desired inter-angles. A detailed explanation will be posted soon in the wiki. In the following video the planes exchange positions every second. Delays, out-of-date positions (GPS delays), packet losses, etc are expected to be (and actually they are) present. It is quite interesting to remark how robust the algorithm is. According to our calculations the impact of such nasty things are not very important (ofc up to a certain point) for the convergence of the algorithm.

Multi-UAV Scientific Flights Video

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 10:07:46 +0000

Last year we had post here about meteorological flights using multiple UAVs. Now, the video of those experiments is finally on-line.

In total 3 planes are used for the scientific measurements and an extra one for aerial footage of the other planes. They are all using Apogee boards with an extra sensor board developed in-house at Enac: the MeteoStick.

IMAV2016

Mon, 24 Oct 2016 21:43:49 +0000

The International Micro-Air Vehicle Conference and Competition was held last week in Beijing, China, organized by the Beijing Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore.

As usual, the level of the teams involved in the competition is higher year after year and we had a great show. The team from the MAVLAB of TUDelft was participating to both indoor and outdoor session. During the outdoor, they unfortunately couldn’t show their best due to many communication issues, preventing them to fully use their RTK Bebop2 (and also some regressions in Paparazzi code, hum hum… :( ).

Flights at the ISARRA2016 conference

Sun, 24 Jul 2016 21:58:21 +0000

Last May, the ISARRA conference (International Society for Atmospheric Research using Remotely Piloted Aircraft) was held in Toulouse, France (http://www.meteo.fr/cic/meetings/2016/isarra/).

The week before the conference, a few teams of researchers gathered to share experiences and fly their drones at the Atmospheric Research Center of Lannemezan near the Pyrenees. Among them was some of the oldest users of Paparazzi: Martin Muller (http://blog.pfump.org), the team of Joachim Reuder from the Geophysical Institute of Bergen, the UAV Lab of ENAC and the French Meteorological Research Center who was hosting the event.

Lisa/S Nano Quadcopter featured on sUAS News

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 17:41:50 +0000

In the light of the recent FAA registration limits, the great guys at sUAS News wrote an article featuring the Paparazzi UAV powered Lisa/S nano Quadcopter. This platform was developed by 1BitSquared in collaboration with the TU-Delft MAV lab team, provides all the autonomous capabilities while being way below the FAA regulated limits for registration. The Lisa/S nano Quadcopter weighs only 39g while the FAA requires all aircraft above 250g to be registred.

Multi-UAV flights for simultaneous meteorological measurements

Fri, 04 Dec 2015 13:53:30 +0000

ENAC UAV Lab team and Meteo-France (CNRS-GAME and ENM) teams have spent several days at the Atmospheric Research Center of Lannemezan (in the south of France) in order to perform experiments for simultaneous meteorological measurements through multi-UAV flight.

This was part of a research project called VOLTIGE aimed at studying the formation of cloud and fog events. One of the planes is measuring the turbulence near the ground, a second plane is flying above the cloud or the fog with a radiation sensor and the last one is making a vertical profile of temperature, pressure and humidity up to 1500 meters AGL.

BACCHUS Meteorological Project

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 11:38:31 +0000

Researchers from the GMEI/MNPCA have recently returned from a one month field measurement campaign at the weather
station of Mace Head in Ireland. Their report was very positive with more than forty scientific flights, up to 3350m above sea level, some of them synchronized with a
meteorological satellite overpass, for the study of interactions between clouds and aerosols. Several unmanned aircraft, equipped with the Paparazzi UAV
systems, have been used, carrying meteorological, aerosol, cloud and 3D wind sensors. A bungee was used for taking-off, while a big net was needed in
order to recover the planes, since the ground was not suitable for traditional landings. This campaign was part of the BACCHUS project (Impact of
Biogenic versus Anthropogenic emissions on Clouds and Climate: towards a Holistic UnderStanding).

PaparazziUAV Flying Robots on Slashdot

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 02:37:19 +0000

The kind folks over at Slashdot.org were nice enough to stop by the PaparazziUAV booth at OSCON 2015 to talk about flying robots. Thanks Tim for the opportunity to talk about HooperFly, the Lisa/MX autopilot from 1bitsquared and the coolest open-source UAV software on the planet, PaparazziUAV.

Here’s a link to the video: Flying Robots on Slashdot.org

Paparazzi UAV + HooperFly = Flying Robots

Wed, 22 Jul 2015 05:42:16 +0000

HooperFly made a great video showing off two of their airframes, flying completely autonomously. These robotic aircraft are based on HooperFly’s own rugged airframe design the TeensyFly and feature Paparazzi UAV powered Lisa/MX autopilots. The multi aircraft support in Paparazzi makes these types of flights possible.

Paparazzi UAV Videos 2004-2010

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 09:50:42 +0000

A few days ago ENAC UAV Lab uploaded their Paparazzi UAV video collection from 2004-2010. If you are interested in some Open-Source UAV history you should take a look at them.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD885PC3Hy2DhiL_OEH3qMrcOFEh2McGN

It is exciting to see how many things Paparazzi UAV could already do 5 to 10 years ago, as well as how far things have improved and evolved since then.

One of the highlights is a multi UAV flight at IMAV2006. This is 9 years ago. It is great to see how relaxed the safety pilots are. :)

Flying the Paparazzi autopilot Blog

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 22:42:45 +0000

Martin Müller and his team have created a blog documenting their meteorological research operations (SUMO). They are flying their Paparazzi based systems in the Antarctic collecting data. It is a great read showing the robustness of the Paparazzi UAV systems and hardware.

Paparazzi at the National Center for Meteorological Research

Sun, 01 Mar 2015 00:00:08 +0000

The National Center for Meteorological Research (CNRM-GAME, Toulouse, France) conducted an airborne experiment in Cyprus in March 2015 as part of the BACCHUS project. The main goal of CNRM’s contribution is to complement the ground-based observations of aerosol and cloud condensation nuclei with airborne measurements to characterize the vertical distribution of aerosol, radiative fluxes, 3D wind vectors and meteorological state parameters. As payloads were limited to 500g (and total weight < 2.5kg), multiple RPAS (remotely piloted aircraft systems) were instrumented for a specific scientific focus. The Paparazzi system was used to navigate the RPAS. During the campaign, airborne measurements were taken over 4 weeks (5 March to 2 April, 2015) with 52 research flights and 38 hours of flight time. Vertical profile were regularly sampled up to 2100 m.asl (limited by authorized flight ceiling) and often observed the layers of dust originating from the Arabian Peninsula and the Sahara Desert. RPAS profiles generally show a well-mixed boundary layer and compare well with ground-based LIDAR observations. Flights below and within clouds were also coordinated with satellite overpasses to perform ’top-down’ closure of cloud micro-physical properties.

ENAC Flying Paparazzi Aircraft at the Atmospheric Research Center of Lannemezan

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 00:00:05 +0000

The ENAC team has been flying several aircraft (X6-Skywalker, Easystar, Funjet) at the Atmospheric Research Center of Lannemezan, close to the Pyrenees in the south of France. The goal was to prepare several meteorological planes for research studies held by Meteo France that will be held next month in Cyprus. Weather conditions were pretty harsh some times, with snow and icy fog, but also provided some really nice pictures, and of course interesting flights up to 1400m AGL with meteorological instruments.

Parrot Bebop Paparazzi Integration

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 00:00:19 +0000

As you know paparazzi is a very modular platform. To show the world how modular we are, we worked hard on implementing paparazzi into the Parrot Bebop. At the Micro Aerial Vehicle Laboratory (MAVLab) of Delft University of Technology faculty Aerospace engineering (TU Delft) we received a pre-production model of the Bebop. We did our best to have paparazzi integrated before the launch of the Bebop. If you want to follow the progress check our (youtube channel).

IMAV 2014 Recap

Sat, 16 Aug 2014 06:27:37 +0000

IMAV 2014 was a great experience this year. If you don’t know what it is, its a micro air vehicle competition and conference that was held in Delft, Netherlands.

During the three days of the conference, there were many very interesting talks and presentations as well as an incredible showcase of research talent during the competition. Here is a playlist of the talks, they can be found on the TU Delft MAVlab YouTube channel.

IMAV 2014 Live Streams

Tue, 12 Aug 2014 00:00:45 +0000

The Micro Aerial Vehicle Laboratory (MAVLab) of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is proud the present the 2014 International Micro Air Vehicle Conference (IMAV 2014), now offering the possibility of attending the conference by live stream free-of-cost. The live stream will support most platforms showing innovative keynotes of pioneers in the industry as well as the current state-of-the-art presented by many researchers working on MAV’s. The schedule is published on the website of the conference. Tuesday, August 12th, 2014

Paparazzi SUMO in Remote Antarctica

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 00:00:23 +0000

John Cassano from the University of Colorado has been flying Paparazzi equipped SUMOs in a remote camp in Antarctica over the last two weeks. See his blog for a detailed report.

Lisa/S The Worlds Smallest UAV Autopilot

Mon, 26 Aug 2013 00:00:53 +0000

TU Delft researchers in collaboration with 1BitSquared have designed and build the world’s smallest autopilot for micro aircraft.

Researcher Bart Remes and his team of the Micro Aerial Vehicle Laboratory at the TU Delft faculty of Aerospace Engineering in a collaboration with Piotr Esden-Tempski from 1BitSquared have designed, built and tested the world’s smallest open source autopilot for small unmanned aircraft. A smaller – and lighter – autopilot allows these small flying robots to fly longer, fit into narrower spaces or carry more payloads, such as cameras. That makes them more suitable to be used in rescue operations for example. Remes: “Our aim? Make MAVs so small and light that every fireman can fit one in his pocket.”

Antarctica Meteo Missions 2013

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 00:00:49 +0000

Over the last 9 weeks the Paparazzi autopilot has been used for operations with remotely piloted aircraft from the Finnish Meteorological Institute for scientific research on board the R.V. Polarstern in the Weddell Sea/Antarctica. You can see the course and read a short report on the homepage of the Alfred Wegener Institut.

Instructions on how to build your own small unmanned meteorological observer (SUMO) can be found here in the Wiki.

Paparazzi in Madagascar

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:33 +0000

In March 2012, Paparazzi flew in southern Madagascar in the frame of a multi-university project to study and improve the ecosystem in one of the poorest regions of the world (Project). More than 4000 hectares of farm and grassland were photographed in visible and near infrared spectrum. More than 8500 photos were taken. Surely one of the biggest missions for science ever flown with Paparazzi.

Antarctic Meteo Summer Missions 2011/2012

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:17 +0000

In the Antarctic summer of 2011/2012 two teams flew Paparazzi-driven UAS on the southernmost continent. The University of Bergen flew at the Norwegian Troll station (video) and the University of Colorado near the US McMurdo station (blog, blog). They measured temperature, humidity, pressure, infrared radiation and wind with a Multiplex Funjet plane.

Antarctica Meteo Missions 2011

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:14 +0000

Paparazzi has flown on the southernmost continent: Antarctica. Scientists from the Finnish Meteorological Institute took three modified Funjets to the Finnish Aboa station and brought them back safely after more than 25 flights. They measured temperature, humidity, pressure, wind direction and speed in altitudes up to 1000m.

University of Stuttgart uses Paparazzi

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:00:38 +0000

The Institute of space systems of University of Stuttgart is using the paparazzi system for large remote sensing aircraft. The missions include basic research and environmental monitoring. Payloads of up to 7kg are carried.

More information can be found on the Wiki page.

Arctic Meteorological Missions 2009

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:38 +0000

We were back in the Arctic flying Paparazzi aircrafts on Svalbard (N78° E15°) doing research with the Geophysical Institute of the University of Bergen/Norway. There are two teams operating near Longyearbyen, one on the apron of Longyearbyen airport (LYR) and the other at the old northern lights research station in Adventdalen. We had permission to fly up to 1500m outside the airport opening times. The Paparazzi aircrafts work perfectly…for humans it is just a little cold. Last night we flew having -32°C (-25°F) on the ground. There is a video showing a 1500m vertical profile flight.

ASME/IEEE Call for Papers

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:52 +0000

Paparazzi Developers, This is to announce a Call for Papers for the 2009 ASME/IEEE International Conference on Mechatronic and Embedded Systems and Applications (MESA09), part of ASME IDETC09. The conference is to be held August 30 - September 2, 2009 at the San Diego Convention Center. This Call for Papers is specific to the Session chaired by myself, Antoine Drouin, and Anton Kochevar. This topic of this session is " Open Source UAV Autopilots: Status and Progression", part of a symposium of MESA09 called “Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Technologies and Applications (SUAVTA)”. This Technical Session is meant to be a session that will focus on Paparazzi, the topics can include specific features developed for Paparazzi or applications using Paparazzi along with other innovative aspects or uses of Paparazzi. We hope to make this one of the largest and best conferences dealing with Paparazzi. Please help us to promote Paparazzi and bring this amazing project to even more people. Full paper deadline is Feb. 27, 2009 using the online submission system.

Paparazzi as Meteorological Tool

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:00:54 +0000

Scientists from the Geophysical Institute of the University of Bergen/Norway flew Paparazzi controlled Funjet aircrafts equipped with meteorological sensors in the Arctic sea around Spitsbergen with only the help of an RC safety pilot and no Paparazzi team member nearby. They took off and landed on the helicopter deck of the Norwegian icebreaking coast guard vessel KV Svalbard for one week and set a new Paparazzi low temperature record by flying at around -20°C and 15m/s wind in altitudes up to 1500m. For another two weeks they also collected data on Spitsbergen near Longyearbyen. See pictures in the gallery and a video.

Flohof measurement campaign

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:00:18 +0000

Three Paparazzi equipped Funjets were part of the Flohof measurement campaign around the Hofsjökull glacier in Iceland. We were able to measure temperature, humidity, pressure and estimate the wind. The authorities issued a NOTAM, clearing the airspace up to 12.000 feet which allowed us to set a new Paparazzi altitude record.

2003 - 2006

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:45 +0000

Paparazzi has come a long way since it’s creation in 2003. For a bit of nostalgia browse the original website.