Artfish

At the same time we gather data from real flights we are also starting to give shape to our path planning algorithms and utilities. We currently have a path plan (as shown in a picture a couple of weeks ago) and also some ‘art’ regarding our utilities.

Artfish (click for a larger version)

There’s a bit more than what it is shown. We can select a different number of waypoints and position them at arbitrary locations. And there’s more coming.

Real flight telemetry test

We’ve worked quite hard during the last weeks preparing telemetry tests in real RC planes. Last saturday, Héctor went with some local RC experts to gather real data. We have some very nice logs from those flights.

Doing real experiments is important because some “minor” problems that never show up in the laboratory arise during the experiment phase.

We are finishing the details of our trip to Noordwijk tomorrow so we’ll just give you a little bit of what we got:

And this is the path the plane took:

See you soon!

We have a plan!

Today we want to show you our flight plan, to illustrate what we expect from our Space-Fish.

Space-Fish flight plan

In this picture, the Space-Fish flight from Bexus begins at 15Km of altitude, foreseeing to the East from the landing area (marked with an A in the map). The first duty is to face the landing area and get into a circumference of 3Km of diameter, with its centre at the A point. Once within the circumference, we start to do several “eights” until we reach the altitude to start landing at the HAC point. In the HAC point we will descent linearly, like a cylinder. Finally, facing the A point, straight on to the final movement, the landing.

It’s easy isn’t it? In our simulations it is, we will face the reality on next October, and we hope it will be successfully!

We thought to perform a low altitude flight over ESRANGE, printing our names with smoke in the sky, but… well, they have not allowed us to do it .

Here, a picture of the landing area from Olle Persson, you can check it out at Latitude 67º53’16”N and Longitude 21º05’06”.

Space-Fish landing area