Re: [Paparazzi-devel] Hello

[antoine]

oupss. I forgot to CC the list


Hello from france Edward

On 2003.08.12 22:05 Edward Freeman wrote:
> Hello world!
>
> I was looking at making a twin-engine fixed wing UAV of my own and had
> just
> joined the source forge Autopilot project and was given a link to your
> site.
> Your project seems to be very similar to what I was looking to make.
> I am not a good C coder (but I get buy) so would be unable to help with
> the
> coding but I work as an FPGA designer. So Id like to think Im quite
> good
> at that ;-)
> I posted to Autopilot about using an FPGA to help with the Kalman filter
> but
> as of yet have had no response. (See copy of post below)

I read your post on the autopilot mailing list and I found it very 
interesting.

> Could offload servo control as well.

The servo control is not really a problem. We have offloaded it (ppm 
decoding too) to a second MCU (atmel mega8), mostly for security reasons :)

> Your project seems to be more willing to use SMD components witch is also
> an
> advantage as most FPGA don't come in though hole components.

I prefer to use SMDs for many reasons, one is that i build the pcbs myself 
and it avoids the tedious drilling. Another reason is that we fly a small 
aircraft (1.5kg and we hope to get under 1kg) and this method allows for 
smaller and lighter boards.

For the hard wired Kalman, I think it's a great idea. We have build the 
autopilot IMU but have discovered that we don't have enough horsepower in 
the onboard MCU to run the INS kalman filter.

We have a show on october fisrt and have decided not to go further with 
the IMU until that date. We will concentrate on our first method, wich 
uses infrared thermopile to sense horizon (as in 
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/horizon_sensing_autopilot.pdf). 
This method requires almost no computation.

After the show, we intend to work again on the IMU and try to find a way 
to run the INS filter onboard.  Your FPGA solution might save us at that 
time.
How easy is it to experiment with FPGA ? Can they be easily reprogrammed ? 
what performances can be expected from them? are there open source tools ?

How far is your project ? What is the size of the aircraft you intend to 
use ?

Hope to ear from you soon

Antoine