Marcy 1's 1st autonomous flight

That there is the culmination of 30 months of off & on, hard work. The 1st stable hover of the Marcy 1 monocopter, under computer control. The last items were getting the takeoff as stable as possible, getting the altitude as stable as possible, aligning the azimuth as close to the camera angle as possible, & trying many PID values.

There was a time when just a takeoff that stable was considered impossible, but we made it happen. Then there was a time when controlling the altitude of such a slowly spinning rotor was considered impossible, but we got it controlled. Finally, horizontal position was not considered controllable, but we managed to control it.

It's still a very unstable aircraft & this is the smallest space it could possibly fly in. The instability seems to be mainly from air turbulence building up from its own downwash, but there's just enough control with exactly the right calibration values to keep it in the air.

A descent was commanded near the end & the motor was killed, because 2 minutes is the point where it overheats. The video is from the machine vision camera.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• marcy
• monocopter
• autopilot
• machine
• vision

[6bobjohnson9]

Surely you won't be unemployed for much longer, considering you overcame the impossible three times.