This past week, I continued work on tuning the process and measurement noise for the Kalman Filter and working to interface with the motors. Specifically, this week I looked into the PPM interface and realized that this is quite similar to a PWM implementation. I found some open source code online that generates the PPM signal and used an oscilloscope to verify that the pulses generated make sense. I wasn’t able to test with our actual drone ESCs and motors because the parts have been delayed in arriving but once those come this week I should be able to test.
I will admit I am a bit behind right now. I’m having some trouble understanding how to tune the process and measurement noise for our Kalman Filter. Measurement noise I understand can be empirically calculated through data analysis of our IMU measurements but process noise is something I’m struggling to figure out how to tune. Additionally, our parts not arriving this week has really set us behind. We are hoping to get parts next week.
This week I will focus on hardware testing. We got confirmation from the ECE receiving desk that the parts should arrive this week so I am hoping to actually do the testing this week. If we can get the Kalman Filtering working with drone motor control by end of Fall Break, I’m confident we will be back on schedule