On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 10:10 AM, Hal V. Engel <hven...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am going to try using the autopilot between spins and during climb outs
> to
> get things in a know state (wings level and so on) as things progress
> through
> the flight.  This should allow for the state of the flight and the control
> inputs to sync up enough to get a reliable playback.
>

Hi Hal,

This was going to be my suggestion: use various combinations of autopilot
modes to control the flight under a variety of conditions.

You may find that you need to tune some of the autopilot modes better than
what they are by default.

You may find that you need to create some new specialized autopilot modes.

Armed with some well tuned autopilot modes, you can write a nasal script (or
even an external perl/python/ruby/etc. script) that can monitor the flight
progress, select and activate the various modes at the correct time, and
then also mix in some open-loop control in key places as well.

I've had some moderately good success doing things like auto take off, auto
landing (even in cross winds), scheduling flaps up/down, gear up/down, etc.
at the proper time, even flying a standard visual pattern.

Nasal gives you all the trig functions, it gives you the ability to save
wgs84 coordinates and then compute course/distance between them, or start
with a coordinate and project out a new coordinate at some distance and
heading.  You have access to all the wind conditions, ground track, true
airspeed, orientation, position, velocity, etc.  You can manipulate any and
all the controls of the aircraft.  You can even automatically select and
manipulate views.

Combine the core capabilities of nasal, the "sensor" data available in the
flightgear property tree, the sophisticated multi-stage configurable
autopilot system, the ability to manipulate anything and everything, and a
visit to the aviation formulary web site and you can be pretty dangerous!

Take a simple wind triangle formula combined with knowledge of true airspeed
and ground track/speed + some well tuned autopilot stages and you can hit
your runway touch down point within a cm or two every time ... even with
significant winds.

With a little effort, it's possible to create some neat fully automated
demonstrations.

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson:
http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/
http://www.flightgear.org -
http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/curt/<http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/personal/curt/>
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