Autopilot

Platform

Ease of development dictated the choice to run the control loop on existing hard- and software. which was chosen to be Ardupilot running on a Beaglebone blue.

Setup

For the beagle bone setup follow this tutorial. The versions of Debian and Ardupilot used in this tutorial are old. The Debian image used on the beaglebone is the 10.13 eMMC flasher. The procedure to flash Debian to the onboard eMMC can be found here. Also make sure to use version 4.3.1 of ardupilot by using the command bellow during the Ardupilot tutorial.

sudo wget -O /usr/bin/ardupilot/arduplane https://firmware.ardupilot.org/Plane/stable-4.3.1/blue/arduplane

Relevant links for configuring Ardupilot

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-gcs-only-operation.html

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-rangefinder-landingpage.html

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/setting-up-for-tuning.html

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/terrain-following-manual-modes.html

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-sensor-offset-compensation.html

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/crash_check.html

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/flight-modes.html --FBW-A mode seems best fit for front only, FBW-B for finalized system

https://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/fbwb-mode.html

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/stabilize-mode.html

https://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/fixed-wing-faq.html --Disable Gyro calibration on start-up

https://ardupilot.org/rover/docs/sonar-sensors.html --Two sonar sensors

https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/plane-architecture.html --Plane architecture and files