It was time to decide. Playing small robots and chiefs with the likes of Arduino and the soldering iron was a nice learning curve but it had to come to an end. The bigger objective of this research was to integrate intelligent algorithm on a platform that was accepted by most engineers and hobbyists. The learning pain will be great, but the support community will be there to help. The need to do things properly and start from a good foundation given the experimental nature of this research is key. It's clear there will be limitations, but what's obvious is that whatever software I build will be implemented on an architecture that's continously changing and being upgraded due to the fast changing nature of current drone industry. So the sooner I get into this game properly, the better it will be for future algorithms. Given the function of software in the loop, implementing a whole range of algorithm will now become a breeze. The prospect of using cheaper materials to...

Don't get me wrong. I like Mathworks products, specifically MATLAB and the suite of control toolboxes. But for curse of being a super monopoly software is that, in order to make profit to drive software updates (which is now expected to be at least twice a year on most toolboxes), the focus is on the popular user requirements. This is often based on academia and research houses which often doesn't deal with hardware or firmware. In so doing, a large percentage of professional engineers productivity is directly coupled to the level of expertise of the analysis tool rather than the process upon which the product is based. Consequently, the poorer or bloated the tool, the slower can an engineer develop a product at lower cost. Unfortunately, the reliance on more powerful machines is the way to circumvent to problem. Just run the bloated simulation fast enough that's it's on longer noticeable to the designer. But is that engineering design? Is not the whole point to i...

Posted by Chris Anderson on April 25, 2017 at 7:00am  View Blog . The PX4/Dronecode team and Drotek have been working on the next generation of Pixhawk autopilots, and you can now see a preview of that with the Pixhawk 3 Pro . It's based on the new PX4 FMU4 Pro standard, which includes a full suite of next-generation sensors and and the more powerful STM32F469 processor. It's designed for the Dronecode/PX4 flight software, which is the current official Pixhawk standard. The board is currently in developer release, but will be taken out of beta after testing is complete in the next month or two. All details are  here  (and below): ------------------ Introduction FMUv4-PRO takes input from all of the Pixhawk stakeholders; end users, developers, researchers and manufacturing partners. Goals for this iteration of the platform are: – An integrated, single-board flight controller for space constrained applications – A modular multi-board flight controller for ...