We didn’t kill anyone.
We didn’t maim anyone.
We didn’t crash the helicopter.
…
It also never left the ground.

That seems to be the standard response from the CS team (of which I am a part) when asked how the competition went. The last week and a half was not all bad, but I had hoped for more.

The new helicopter we received was actually Bergen’s personal helicopter. It flew fine by itself, but after we loaded it down with all our gear it just couldn’t provide enough lift. After consulting with Bergen and his experts, a fuel change was made and the engine was tuned. This gave us more lift (potentially enough to fly), but by this time it was late Sunday evening and we were to leave early Monday morning. It was too dark to do any more flight testing anyways (despite an impressive array of lighting).

During the days leading up to the competition, the CS team became increasingly frustrated with what was happening. Our software works. We can fly a simulated helicopter. Autonomous hover was just a few hours of flight testing away. But without a working helicopter, our many hundreds of hours of coding can do nothing. This frustration resulted in a less than positive attitude towards other team members, everything mechanical, and the world in general. Tensions were high within the team.

After arriving at Fort Benning, everyone worked very hard on everything that needed to be done. Unfortunately, a last minute problem with the kill switch coupled with the fact that we still needed several hours of flight testing meant that there was no way we could achieve autonomous hover.

Two very good things did happen during the final rush to prepare the helicopter. We discovered an EMI issue with our AHRS unit (which tells us the orientation of the helicopter) that threw the yaw reading way off. We were able to work with a guy from Rotomotion (the company that manufactures our AHRS) and remount the magnetometers further away from the engine, which completely eliminated the interference problems. The CS team also attended an incredible lecture on PID (the mathematical model we use to have the computer correct the helicopter’s flight) use in RC helicopters. The lecture was extremely informative and directly applicable to what we are doing. The speaker taught us several important concepts that will help us further the abilities of the flight program, and also validated almost everything the software team has done to this point. We are in a very good position for next semester.

Ironically, after everyone realized that there was no possible way we could fly, the morale level of the team increased dramatically. We didn’t have to care anymore. :-) So, we had a good time talking with the other teams and watching the competition. Only two teams actually completed Level 1 this year (flying the GPS waypoint course), and no Level 2-4 attempts were made. So, we’re still in the running for next year, at which point we will complete Level 4 and win everything!

The last week and a half in pictures.