PAPARAZZI UAV BLOG

Research and development of open-source UAV systems since 2003

Videos

12 March 2017 · Hector Garcia de Marina

First flights of the hybrid vehicle Cyfoam with Chimera board

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.

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24 February 2017 · Gautier Hattenberger

Flying Parrot's Disco aircraft with Paparazzi

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:

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21 February 2017 · Hector Garcia de Marina

Circle formations of fixed-wing aircraft

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 Delays, out-of-date positions (GPS delays), packet losses, etc are expected to be (and actually they are) present.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.

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20 September 2016 · Rich Burton

DELFTACOPTER - Hybrid Drone on a Mission

DELFTACOPTER, an electric, long range, transitioning autonomous delta-wing helicopter, is on a mission. What mission? In this case, it’s the 2016 Outback Medical Express challenge and the MAVLab Team at TUDelft has high hopes for their hybrid aircraft.

This year’s Outback Medical Express mission requires a UAV to pick up and bring back a blood sample of an ill-fated person called “Outback Joe” located at an inaccessible roughly known location 30 kilometer away remote location with unknown terrain.

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1 August 2016 · Gautier Hattenberger

Drones vs. Retro-gaming: fly with a Game Boy Classic

Some time ago, I found my old Game Boy at my parents’ house. So the first thing that came to my mind was: can I fly a drone with this ? (and also where is my Mario Bros cartridge).

So I spend some time searching the web to see if I could find some idea to solve my problem. And if it seems that piloting unmanned aircraft with a Game Boy is not so common, you can find everything you need to program it!

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21 March 2016 · Piotr Esden-Tempski

Introduction to the G0 GPS

Dear Paparazzians,

I made a new video describing the details of the G0 Paparazzi UAV GPS receiver module. In the video I go through and describe the several design decisions we made to ensure high Signal to Noise Ratio, good multi path GPS signal rejection and overall reliability of the GPS for use in airborne robotics applications.

I hope this video is helpful. If you think so too please let me know in the YouTube comments. If you enjoyed the video make sure to like it on YouTube and subscribe to the channel.

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3 March 2016 · Piotr Esden-Tempski

Introduction to the Elle0 Autopilot

Dear Paparazzians,

I made a new video describing the details of the Elle0 Paparazzi UAV autopilot. Elle0 is now available for purchase in the 1BitSquared store together with the G0 companion GPS receiver. In the video I go through and describe every IO pin as well as some of the design differences to the Lisa/MX Autopilot. Additionally, I describe how you can add a battery voltage monitor to your Elle0 using a voltage divider circuit.

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27 September 2015 · Danika Esden-Tempski

Multi MAV Autonomous Flight

Rich Burton of Hooperfly made a video showcasing the flexibility and accuracy of the PaparazziUAV system running on the 1BitSquared Lisa/MX autopilot.

Using Paparazzi’s flight plan software to dictate a pattern of waypoints for three of his TeensyFly MAV’s to take off autonomously, hover, fly a rectangular pattern, hover and land. All the flight plan blocks are triggered in unison with a custom papget xml config file. The unison nature of their flight is quite beautiful to behold.

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