Hi,
We have designed a fixed wing UAV. The prototype was made by wood manually. The purely manual flight test by RC operator is almost done and successful. It flies well as expected and easy to control. We are currently deciding what shall be the next step to make it commercial.
Shall we install the autopilot and tune the parameters firstly then go for mold building? Or shall we build the mold firstly then installs and tunes the autopilot for it?
It costs quite some time to make the prototype. So if taking the time cost into consideration, the prototype values more than 30 times than one commercial plane which would be made by using mold.
Open source autopilot (Pixhawk) is selected. We are all newbie to autopilot. We just grab knowledge about Pixhawk from its official website and some forums. We plan to gain some parameters tuning experience by tuning practice on some cheap RC foam fixed wings before the tuning of our large UAV. But anyway we are not professional at installing autopilot and tuning the autopilot parameters. We are quite afraid of crash (even broken) of the prototype. So up to now, we see an important reason to build the mold firstly then install the autopilot – avoid risking the expensive prototype.
What process UAV companies typically choose in their product developments? Do they also build the mold before the installation of their autopilot for similar reason? Or there are also some other considerations? What shall we consider regarding this?
We have designed a fixed wing UAV. The prototype was made by wood manually. The purely manual flight test by RC operator is almost done and successful. It flies well as expected and easy to control. We are currently deciding what shall be the next step to make it commercial.
Shall we install the autopilot and tune the parameters firstly then go for mold building? Or shall we build the mold firstly then installs and tunes the autopilot for it?
It costs quite some time to make the prototype. So if taking the time cost into consideration, the prototype values more than 30 times than one commercial plane which would be made by using mold.
Open source autopilot (Pixhawk) is selected. We are all newbie to autopilot. We just grab knowledge about Pixhawk from its official website and some forums. We plan to gain some parameters tuning experience by tuning practice on some cheap RC foam fixed wings before the tuning of our large UAV. But anyway we are not professional at installing autopilot and tuning the autopilot parameters. We are quite afraid of crash (even broken) of the prototype. So up to now, we see an important reason to build the mold firstly then install the autopilot – avoid risking the expensive prototype.
What process UAV companies typically choose in their product developments? Do they also build the mold before the installation of their autopilot for similar reason? Or there are also some other considerations? What shall we consider regarding this?
