OpenPilot

OpenPilot

Developer(s)	OpenPilot Team
Stable release	none / n/a
Operating system	Cross-platform Windows, MacOS, Linux & iPhone
Type	Unmanned aerial vehicle
License	GPLv3
Website	http://www.OpenPilot.org

OpenPilot is a Free software unmanned aerial vehicle project for model aircraft aimed at supporting both multi-rotor craft as well as fixed wing aircraft. Initially founded by David Ankers, Angus Peart and Vassilis Varveropoulos in late 2009, OpenPilot was conceived as both a learning tool and to address areas the developers perceived were lacking in other small UAV platforms.^[1]

The OpenPilot software is released under the GPL version 3 license.

Components

The OpenPilot project consists of two component parts, these are the on-board firmware and the Ground Control Station.^[2] The firmware part of the project is written in C whilst the Ground Control Station is written in C++ utilising the Qt Toolkit.

Hardware

The current on-board hardware is a custom designed solution based on the STM32 Microcontroller. ^[3] There are two physical boards that are part of the hardware solution, the first is the main OpenPilot board which contains the core Microcontroller, SD socket, barometer plus servo connectors and second, the AHRS board which contains the sensor hardware.

AHRS

The OpenPilot AHRS is a 9DOF unit and contains MEMS gyroscopes, accelerometers and a 3 direction magnetometer. Combined with the sensors, the OpenPilot AHRS contains its own Cortex M3 Microcontroller which runs a Kalman filter^[4]. Filtered orientation data and inertial measurements are presented back to the main OpenPilot board using an SPI interface.^[5]

The OpenPilot AHRS contains the following components^[6]:

• STM32 Onboard (STM32F103C8)
• 3x ADXRS610 Rate Gyros
• 1x HMC5843 Magnetometer
• 1x LIS344ALH 3-Axis Accelerometer

References

1. ^ http://www.openpilot.org/about/
2. ^ Randal Schwartz (Host), Aaron Newcomb (Co-Host), James Cotton (Guest), and David Ankers (Guest) (2011-01-12) (mp4). FLOSS Weekly 148: OpenPilot (Podcast). Petaluma, California: TWiT.tv. http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp4/twit.cachefly.net/video/floss/floss0148/floss0148_h264b_864x480_500.mp4. Retrieved 2011-07-30. 
3. ^ http://www.openpilot.org/OpenPilot_v1.1
4. ^ http://www.openpilot.org/OpenPilot_AHRS
5. ^ http://www.openpilot.org/OpenPilot_AHRS
6. ^ http://forums.openpilot.org/topic/34-ahrs-development-progress/

External links

• openpilot.org