New Robot: Preflight check

Credit: Steven Chen, Guilherme Nardari, Vaibhav Arcot

Follow These Steps Before Every Flight

These are lessons learned from crashes

Golden Rules

1. Everyone should always stay behind and keep a safe distance (>3m) from the safety pilot, to leave space for emergency take-over and avoid collision with the safety pilot.
2. No person / car except for the safety pilot should be directly below the UAV.

Roles

1. (Safety Pilot) Familiarize yourself with how to take over, land, and disarm the drone.
2. (Computer Pilot) (Automated) Familiarize yourself with the software commands and GUI (Manual) Monitor QGC for Warnings
3. (Scout/Videographer) Optional Take videos, follow drone, shout out strange behaviors

Preflight Check

1. Check loose cabling. These can catch in the propellers and make the drone crash.
2. Check that wires are tightly plugged in and hot-glued into ESC. These can fall out during flight and make the drone crash.
3. Check the battery levels/balance. Getting too low can cause the Pixhawk to restart and make the drone crash. Battery cell should always be above 3.4V.
4. Check that the battery monitor will beep a warning when battery levels get below threshold. The battery level getting too low during a flight will make the Pixhawk restart and the drone crash.
5. Perform a manual flight. This is important every time you start a new flight to make sure the trims on the RC are correct, there is nothing loose on the drone, the drone is behaving normally, the safety pilot can anticipate drone behavior.
6. Reboot the Pixhawk before every automated flight. Not rebooting the Pixhawk will mess up state estimates and cause the drone to crash.

Flight Commands

Check that everyone is ready Follow these commands every time before an automated flight (inspired by rock climbing). The purpose is to ensure everyone involved in the drone flight is ready

1. Computer Pilot: Autonomy Ready! (Computer Pilot disarms, drone in autonomy mode, RC controller has no effect)
2. Safety Pilot: Safety Ready! (Safety Pilot checks switches on RC for easy takeover in case of crash)
3. Computer Pilot: Flying!
4. Safety Pilot: Fly Away!