[Paparazzi-devel] UnB mini UAV

[Lucas Severo Alves]

Hi all, 

I study in a university (UnB, Universidade de Brasilia) in Brazil, Brasilia-DF, and I'm a member of a group that are developing A mini UAV. The goal is:

- at least 60 min flight time

- linear lenght of 3m (max)

- 4kg +- 0,500kg

- It have to be able of gyro-stabilized imaging

- sensors: GPS, IMU, Speed Sensor, 

- 20 km range datalink and RC

- initially it has to be LPC based (not LISA...) *(It can change..)

<must have> and some <opitional> components:

- motor and PWM controller (ESC/Speed)

- IMU

- Magnetometer

- Pitot tube

- Ultrasom

- microcamera

- RC receptor

- data communication modole

- USB interfacce for gyro-stabilized imager

Searching in the paparazzi wiki I mostly concluded that we could use it in our project, 

except for some components (not that important), and for the batery "menagement"...

Required in the implementation plane made by my supervisor:

Charge monitoring, charging/balancing solution, and some DC/DC converters... 

I did'nt find any article in the wiki about bateries and alimentation... any help in 

this part would be awesome.

We are planing to implement paparazzi, if it fits our needs, following something like 

this reference:

http://www.ece.usu.edu/grad/reports_theses_disseratations/2009/han_yiding/thesis.pdf

(HAN, Y. An Autonomous Unnamed Aerial Vehicle-Based Imagery System Development And 

Remote Sensing Images Classification For Agricultural Applications. 2009. Dissertação de 

Mestrado em Engenharia Elétrica) - Utah State University, Utah.)

Here they use paparazzi autopilot with gumstix microcomputer. They leave gumstix 

handling the sensors, and paparazi is responsable only for the control (motors, servos, 

propeler...), control datalink and RC receiver.

I did'nt finish the reading of the Thesis, but I wonder if this is really clever.

We thoght about making this kind of thing, but leave some sensors for paparazi if 

gumstix fails. We have some really expensive sensors (IMU,GPS etc) witch were provided 

by our project sponsor, and I wonder if its a simple task to use them on gumstix, and 

then let paparazzi work with what he is used to work.

Another question: how simple/hard is to use a not sugested sensor with paparazzi, 

without this gumstix approach.

If we choose to use Gumstix(sensors) + paparazzi(conttrol + some safety sensors), It's 

better pick a autopilot with this sensors integrated (like Umarim Lite or NavGo)? Or Its 

best to use a TWOG with some sugested sensors pluged in it? We want some reability in 

this case too.

I think tahts all for now. 

Sorry for bad english (Dont be grammar nazi on me...).

If you can answer one of this questions, please answer, you dont have to answer all of 

them at once.

Paparazzi seems like a awesome project, very developed, and I really want to use it.

Thanks all. 

Cordially,

Lucas Severo Alves