I'm making an autonomous glider with a friend

[14NateHiggers88]

I'll post stuff relating to it here, my way of keeping progress. I have been working on it for the last few months and in around a week we head to competition.

 

[14NateHiggers88]

Final PCB I'm sending off to get made in China. It hasn't panned out exactly how I wanted it to, but I think it should work.

 

[PepsiMan]

Gemmy

 

[14NateHiggers88]

I'll be doing some flights tomorrow to get the PID values tuned. Also will be attending a meeting with our teams advisor. Flight testing with the integration of the glider and main airplane will happen on Wenesday.

 

[14NateHiggers88]

Ordered some LED's so we can see it since it is required fo the competition. Also got some 100ohm SMD resistors and a transistor so my microcontroller can turn the LEDS on and off since they require more current than my chip can provide.

I already wrote code that controls the elevons to bring back the glider to the desired pitch and roll orientation, but now I have to combine it with the code that takes my GPS and magnetometer data (compass) and says how many degrees left or right I have to turn. Reading the GPS data was a massive pain in the ass and there were very few tutorials on how to do it. In addition I kept having issues with my compass reading being shitty with the library for the magnetometer I am using whenever the sensor is pitched up or down and I had to fix this with linear algebra and transformations.

Here is how I handle the PID controls, you should be able to tell what is going on through the variable names. This process is quite simple and I used it basically the exact same way when I wrote my quadcopter flight controller.

Here is the back side of the PCB I showed before. The LED's I ordered are going to be directly soldered onto here.

Same board, just different way of showing what is going on.

I previously designed this PCB, but decided not to use it since I couldn't figure out how to program the STM32 in an easy way. I was bashing my head in for over 2 weeks of on and off work before I decided to just use the teensy 4.0. I got alot of parts to work, but it was causing so many issues that it simply wasn't worth it... also I got burned out in the process.
I don't even study electrical engineering so I had to learn all this stuff on my own which made it that much harder.

 

[14NateHiggers88]

Did some flight testing from the main plane. This was the first time we had somewhat controllable flight with my controller doing something. Tomorrow I'll be testing again, but dropping it from a quadcopter, then on Friday I hope to test it with the Compass and GPS active.

 

[Goot]

The frame looks sick
Is it going to get wrapped?
but the wong chord is a bit short for a glider, is it meant to test maneuvering and stability in a steep glide?

 

[Goot]

Did some flight testing from the main plane. This was the first time we had somewhat controllable flight with my controller doing something. Tomorrow I'll be testing again, but dropping it from a quadcopter, then on Friday I hope to test it with the Compass and GPS active.
View attachment 175200

>didn't read award
Oh so you're doing the shuttle glide too

 

[14NateHiggers88]

The frame looks sick
Is it going to get wrapped?
but the wong chord is a bit short for a glider, is it meant to test maneuvering and stability in a steep glide?

It is a glider in the sense that it doesn't have a means of propulsion. The part of the competition that I am concerned with is to make an autonomous glider that detaches from a larger aircraft that will land in a specified 60x60 meter area, the score is based on how light the glider is. So the plane does not really have to be maneuverable or even efficient as a glider, it just has to get to the ground in a specified area while weighing as little as possoble. I think our final product will weigh under 1 ounce, 28 grams.

>Is it going to get wrapped
It is already wrapped in a plastic foil in the picture o algo.

 

[14NateHiggers88]

>didn't read award
Oh so you're doing the shuttle glide too

No, I'm on a larger team of 12 people. 10 people are working on the main plane while me and a friend are working on the glider. He does all the mechanical/physical parts of it while I do all the electronics and coding for it. We could have used an off the shelf flight controller, but I figured I'd learn more by building my own.

 

[14NateHiggers88]

After the competition next week I want to take a week break to recoup and catch up on all my classes, but after that I wanted to make a machine learning system that will learn on its own to swing up and hold upright a double pendulum. I'm really looking forward to working on this, but I am really burned out at the moment. I have been working pretty much daily on this project for the last few months.

 

[UendeligKamp]

Finally good thread on the schloggy.

 

[Goot]

It is a glider in the sense that it doesn't have a means of propulsion. The part of the competition that I am concerned with is to make an autonomous glider that detaches from a larger aircraft that will land in a specified 60x60 meter area, the score is based on how light the glider is. So the plane does not really have to be maneuverable or even efficient as a glider, it just has to get to the ground in a specified area while weighing as little as possoble. I think our final product will weigh under 1 ounce, 28 grams.

>Is it going to get wrapped
It is already wrapped in a plastic foil in the picture o algo.

WIth the right trim you could probably do that unguided taking a page out out proffesional paper airplane technique

 

[14NateHiggers88]

WIth the right trim you could probably do that unguided taking a page out out proffesional paper airplane technique

You aren't even wrong, I did this mostly so I have something to talk about on job interviews tho. With this sort of approach I wouldn't have learned as much about electronics as I have so far which for me personally is quite important. We are still going to be more competitive than 95% of all teams with what we have so far. All other examples I have seen from what other teams have posted have been hot garbage. I don't care that much about winning as long as I make something that I'm happy with.