Far too many drone companies have been involved in a journey that has been characterised by a short honeymoon. From an African standpoint, the journey was always delayed.  Most African drone companies have been involved in training initiatives , environmental initiatives and consumer journalism .  But the bulk of the drone development was performed in Asia , USA and Europe .   So it's no surprise that Venture capitalist invested mainly in Asian and American companies.  But given the recent reports and the foreclosure of big startups last year , the drone landscape has changed.  So a question needs to be asked, what would happen to up-coming drone manufacturing companies based in Africa? Below are three key aspects that we believe drone manufacturers need to take into consideration going to the next 3 to 5 years. Focus on Functionality One of the biggest elements when it comes to drone development is the ability to focus not just on the e...

The impact (good and bad) of drones in society is no longer in question. But what will it take for drones to impact a traditionally outdated, low-profit-margin civil works industry through the use of technology? The solution lies in a low-cost approach. One could say it all started when a bunch of scientists realized they could do a far better job in measuring objects accurately and at a distance rather then an individual putting himself in harm's way and using expensive/primitive equipment for the same task. We're talking about photogrammetry. In a nutshell (or should I say according to Wikipedia), Photogrammetry is the science of making measurements from photographs, especially for recovering the exact positions of surface points. In more simplistic terms, provided you have some form of frame of reference (like a ruler) you can determine the physical properties of objects and their exact location to the accuracy of the remote sensing equipment used (a 4K-size imag...

There's a lot of debate around the economic suitability of drones for the delivery of the goods as a direct competitor to traditional trucks and delivery vans. There's an article written by Flexport which highlights two crucial factors that makes drones delivery of general goods not feasible, even in the near future: (1) route density and (2) drop size. Route density is the number of drop-offs you can make on a delivery route and drop-size is the number of parcels per stop on that delivery route. Given the strict airspace regulations on drone size and weight, it has become quite evident, particularly in the African context, that the delivery of general goods will not be an economically viable option even though the obvious need might say otherwise.  However, further analysis and demonstration have shown, from companies like Matternet and others, that the transport of the time-sensitive and high-value parcels (legal-documents, medicine samples, high-value spices...

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 ...

Re: fast communication between two arduinos #9 Sep 07, 2015, 05:06 pm Thanks guys, At the end I re-Checked the I2C protocol and understood it can only pass Chars ether by array or singles and managed to work with the code from here: http://ift.tt/1DAeWM4 and created my version to pass a 4 digit code and it work quite fast (less than 1ms). // Wire Master Reader int x,y; #include <Wire.h> void setup() {   Wire.begin();        // join i2c bus (address optional for master)   Serial.begin(115200);  // start serial for output } void loop() {   Wire.requestFrom(2, 6);    // request 6 bytes from slave device #2      int a = Wire.read(); // receive a byte as character      int b = Wire.read(); // receive a byte as character      int c = Wire.read(); // receive a byte as character      int d = Wire.read(); // receive a byte as character ...

South Korea’s National Standard on Drones The Korean Agency for Technology & Standards (KATS) of the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy said that it announced the world’s first national standard on drones on December 30. The national standard has the title of KSW9000: Classification & Terms of Unmanned Aircraft Systems. It provides the definition of terms regarding 52 types of drones, such as large unmanned aircraft and remotely controlled drones, along with six categories of classification based on operating altitudes, maximum takeoff weights, kinetic energy, etc. According to the standard, drones can be classified into five categories based on their maximum takeoff weights, ranging from 2 kg or less to more than 600 kg. In addition, those with a dead weight of 150 kg or less are dubbed unmanned powered aerial vehicles, those with a dead weight of more than 150 kg and up to 600 kg are called midsize unmanned aircraft and the others are classified as large u...

So I've decidex to try out something I've been meaning to try out for a while now. Which is to setup my Gopro camera for some aerial photography. Eventhough I've been looking at getting a more polished system like a Dji Phantom drone, I thought there's a lot of mileage I can get just using what I already have. So having studied the best layout for the camera and battery, once the weather clears out, I'll be trying out this system. I'll need to get a Fatshark system to get into proper FPV flying although the aim is not for that at all.  The mass of the Gopro with casing is about 140g with means the all up weight has increased by 26% which means less battery life although one would not need 4min of video anyway. 

Great flying yesterday at the park next to our house. Conditions are again just right to do some circuits and brief nose-in hover. I must say I feel that that I'm really enjoying the heli alot better now that I have tweaked the thrust curve. It remains responsive and quite stable around hover. Started using my homemade cap mounted gopro. The videos look great. Visit here to see some of them. It's nice and stable and after a while, you forget that you have it on you. Accumulated flight: 79min

So it was my first flight with the Blade 300 CFX yesterday and like anything new, the rush not to end in an epic failure that will leave you gutted for days was upon me. After doing a transmission/range sweep I put the aircraft through its paces. Coming from the Blade mCPX heli, going through the structural modes of the heli caught me by surprise thinking there's something wrong with the heli, Anyway pushing through it, even with a slight breeze, managed to get the aircraft in the air and maintaining tail-in hover. Most of time was spent in getting a feel of the controls and the dynamics on the heli. It looks very responsive which made you think twice about having any sudden knee-jerk reactions on the radio controls. After 4min, I landed the heli with raw smiles all around my face. Good job!

So I decided to build a new aircraft since my 2m glider only gave me limited flying options. This is was quite a quick project as all was designed in Solid Edge including the electronics. This enabled me to work out the mass and balance throughout the design process. The total weight sits at 250g. This includes autopilot and GPS. It's designed to have external servos and a shifting wing placement since it will have various payloads like a mini VGA camera. The electronics are housed nicely in the fuselage powered by a 850mAh 7.4V battery. I've removed the redundant magnetometer in the autopilot board. Still not sure on the CG placement, but from the crashed maiden test and the fact that the control moment arm is quite small, it's believed that the C.G. needs to be further aft from the wing main spar (which currently sits on the aerodynamic center).

So finally the FAA has released its take on how to regulate the commercial use of drones or unmanned aircraft on USA territory. It's mostly good news although, some companies (like Amazon) will not be too happy. The gist of the rules are as follows (copied from here ): Unmanned aircraft must weigh less than 55 lbs. (25 kg). Visual line-of-sight (VLOS) only; the unmanned aircraft must remain within VLOS of the operator or visual observer. At all times the small unmanned aircraft must remain close enough to the operator for the operator to be capable of seeing the aircraft with vision unaided by any device other than corrective lenses. Small unmanned aircraft may not operate over any persons not directly involved in the operation. Proposes a microUAS option that would allow operations in Class G airspace, over people not involved in the operation, provided the operator certifies he or she has the requisite aeronautical knowledge to perform the operation. Daylight-only operati...

So the game space has changed. The South Africa CAA ( SACAA ) has come out guns blazing drafting regulations regarding remotely Piloted Aircraft/System (RPA/RPS). One thing was clear, this massive chaos that growing in this country had to come to an end. Already, the general population of stakeholders in the civilian airspace have a very nonchalant attitude when it comes to safety and security. So the introduction of aviation regulations towards the growing market of drones is a much needed intervention.

So I've been battling to establish a simple method in mimicking rc control inputs during a sustained or coordinated turn of the aircraft. This is quite important as it's not the same as stabilizing controller which reacts to dynamic events while having a static reference. A coordinated turn has a dynamic reference which is coupled to the turn rate experienced which directly related to the speed and the roll command inputs. But since the turn rate of the aircraft can be extracted from the gyroscope measurements, it can be stated that post processing of these signals (using a low pass filter) should give an indication of whether such method can be used alongside a stabilizing controller. This is such that once a coordinated turn can be achieved even in adverse weather, waypoint tracking is closer to being realised. Amendment 15/1/2015: It was found after careful analysis of the flight dynamics of a simple aircraft that gyroscope measurements was not a fool-proof way of ...

So I had a brainwave the past two days in how to test various aspects of the autopilot modes without having to land and flash new software. It became very frustrating that for each morning, I had to land the aircraft 5-6 times and increase the risks crashing and even worse loosing the instrumentation on board the glider. This approach could potentially allow me to analyze various options of flight modes and optimize which one best suited for that function. The ultimate goal is of course, the speed at which each flight modes can tested. So I manage to devise a method that allows me to use a switching mechanism such that I can switch between each programmed flight modes by using transmitter only. The code was tested and seems to work just fine. Now it's just a matter of testing in flight.

So after a period of absence of over a month (feel depressed everytime I say it), I got back into the groove of things. Decided not to wait to get back on the field to test the pitch and roll autopilot and decided to start working on the waypoint tracking algorithm . The advantage of having your own home with a garden is that you no longer struggle to get a GPS lock (There's no more concrete flats surrounding us yeah!!!). So got familiar with my gear again. Also decided to buy a piezo buzzer that could be used as a replacement of the serial monitor. The aim was to increase the intensity of sound as you got closer to the next waypoint. In such a way you will know if you're going the correct way. Decided to use GPS Visualizer to get waypoints on the property. Re-formatted the points into the code uploaded it onto the controller. It must add that I managed to successfully run arduino from the linux command line and use the program screen as a serial monitor. Not only is it m...

deadband diagram (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Managed to squeeze another flight test on Sunday morning (the usual madness occurred afterwards). Had about 7 - 8 hand launches to test the pitch autopilot with the gyro measurements integrated in the PID loop . It was quite that some adjustment to the how these inputs are being used was needed. So after each landing, adjustment to the gains was made. The erratic nature of the control requires a deadband filter approach which would enable the airframe to settle on a particular flight path naturally (restoring motion). A crude logic was implemented and tested and seemed to work although further test will need to confirm such approach. From a kinematics point of view, it makes sense and prevents excessive servo control usage which decreases the life of the part dramatically. Once confirmation that the logic is sound, the same approach will be made on the roll and speed autopilots which will allow us in the next 2-3 weeks move towards...

We've been having quite bad (windy) weather that It has been almost impossible to get the glider up in the air to gather more flight data . But nonetheless, I managed to analyse the data that I have come to some interesting conclusion on the behaviour of the aircraft in flight. The post-filtering of the IMU euler angles prior to controller design only add approximately 4/10th of the second in lag (guestimate). The servo limiter which I set on all channels is which what a normal flight actuation is experienced (considering wind factors). It's quite clear from the graphs that GPS velocity is expected to change with aircraft pitch although the nature of the sensitivity over a 1Hz update was not expected. The noise factor in launch in both roll and pitch channels shows that an alternative method needs to be established for a take-off and landing autopilot mode. There seems to be a considerable lag in pitch servo input and pitch change. This makes sense for the fact that t...

So I got some flight time under my belt yesterday. I must say there's nothing better than seeing your flying skills improve with time ( I can't wait to get more batteries so I can get my heli in the air as well). Anyway, back to the glider autopilot . Managed to get the roll autopilot to stabilize the aircraft which was a great feat. Although because the glider is inherently unstable during banking (due to the battery pack sitting on top of the wing) the roll autopilot relies heavily in controlling the rates produced by the aircraft. This is still a problem as roll rate doesn't yet have a strong influence in the control loop . The same can be said about the pitch controller (which I had to land the aircraft, upload new code and launch again). Due to the lack of control on the pitch rate, the phugoid mode of the aircraft is activated and the aircraft goes into an unstable dives which eventually would cause a crash. The use of the safety switch mechanism logic has ...

An aircraft separation incident between an unmanned aerial vehicle and crop duster highlights the challenges with having a diverse mix of aircraft operating in the same airspace. On 12 September 2013 the pilot of an Ayres S2R commenced aerial agricultural spraying operations on a property near Horsham, Victoria. At about the same time, the operator of a UAV, Sensefly eBee 178, arrived at ‘Iluka Echo’ (Echo) mine site to conduct an aerial photography survey of the site. After completing his pre-flight preparation and risk assessment of the operation, the operator heard an aircraft operating about 1 – 1.5 km away on a neighbouring property.