RC Osprey Fail safe

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi,
I would like some guidance on how to build a fail safe into an RC Osprey plane using Arduino UNO (to maintain a default height to prevent crashing). I would be grateful for help with the coding and components that might be needed.
Regards,
Beginner

2

Do you have a radar altimeter on it? Or some other reasonably reliable way to measure the height?

There are autopilots, but what you are asking is quite advanced. Imagine your plane being well above the minimal safe height that your system is set to maintain. You then dive steeply. What happens? Does the autopilot take over automatically? Or waits for the last moment to take control? A PID system would be needed to judge when to take over. Maybe you wanted to make a sharp maneuver to avoid some unexpected obstacle but the autopilot doesn't allow it.

What happens in a stall? Are you relying on the system to save itself?
Like I said, there are autopilots for fixed winged aircraft, helicopeter and even multirotors, but I'm not sure about variable wing geometry stuff.

This is a good forum, but there is a web site DIY Drones that would probably be a better place to seek guidance. After all, guys over there do pretty much what you need.

3

Thank you for your quick reply,
Any suggestions on simple but impressive applications of Arduino UNO in the RC Osprey?

4

Also can the UNO store data on its own, perhaps on a usb, that can later be used on a computer?

5

snoopie:
I would like some guidance on how to build a fail safe into an RC Osprey plane using Arduino UNO

What you're describing is essentially an autopilot, and some logic to decide when to enable it. There are lots of drone developers working on autopilots and you will probably get more informed help on forums dedicated to that, but from what I've seen even good autopilots often rely on a human pilot to recover when the autopilot loses control, rather than the other way around. This probably indicates how hard it is to make a really robust autopilot, which is what you'd need if it was required to recover control when the human pilot has lost it.