End of Week 1
Sorry for the lack of updates, things have been very busy here in Lubbock. We've run into a bunch of unforseen challenges along the way, but it wouldn't be an engineering field deployment if everything went perfectly the first time! Since our first week of the deployment has come to a close, we can recap our successes and what lies ahead for week 2.
For the first week, we successfully:
1. Collected and synced dual-doppler synthesis data
2. Ran this data through an Online Atmospheric Planner algorithm
3. Transferred this data to a MongoDB operating in the field
4. Connected a high-level graph planner with the trajectory optimization layer
5. Submitted energy-optimal paths to the aircraft in real-time (and flew them in AUTO mode)
6. Fixed a whole lot of bugs!
While the system still hasn't been run in its entirety, we are excited that the 2nd week will be more testing and less troubleshooting. Monday will contain another attempt to link every component of the EA-DDDAS and submit some loitering trajectories to the aircraft. These will be compared to simple "flat" circular trajectories to evaluate the efficacy of flying energy-optimal trajectories.
The Tempest has been flying great thanks to our excellent and dedicated flight crew. Spirits remain high as we are excited and optimistic about the flight tests that lay ahead.
That's all for now, I'll try to update more frequently this week to give a day-by-day breakdown of our progress.