The 3 Flight Control Systems

I breakdown the flight controls into 3 distinct systems: onboard, autonomous, and human. I think about it like this: the onboard system will keep the vehicle in the air for seconds, the autonomous system will keep the vehicle in air for minutes and the human system will keep the vehicle in the air indefinitely and define useful tasks for the vehicle to do.  Each system needs to communicate with the one above and below it.

Onboard System: This system does the bulk of the work. This will be the system that keeps the evtol in stable flight, it (currently) runs on arduino (but this may have to change).  It includes the gyroscope/accelerometer and altimeter to maintain stability and position. It also includes all the flight hardware including frame, props, wings, battery etc...

Speed: 250hz

Communication: SPI, 12C,

Autonomous System: This system will run on a raspberry pi and will assist with human flight control system. Current plan is on using stereo vision with two logitech usb camera’s and a raspberry pi to handle the computations. (I’m writing this software myself, may use opencv to help with some image stuff. First iteration of flight system will simply map out surface points, and have evtol avoid hitting any surface.

Speed: 30hz

Communication: 4g Cellular, USB, SPI,

Human system:  This is basically an iphone app and will provide the user with an interface to control high level flight controls of the system. Such as entering a lat,lng destination.

Speed: 2hz

Communication: 4g Cellular