What was accomplished

●       The fully assembled competition drone completed its first test flights, validating basic flight stability, motor response, and control handling.

●       Telemetry, GPS lock, and RC link were confirmed stable throughout multiple test flights, matching bench-test performance.

●       The onboard mapping and detection pipeline was tested in live flight for the first time, successfully generating a stitched map and detecting test targets placed in the flight area.

Challenges and solutions

The main challenge was a minor vibration-induced GPS accuracy drop noticed during the first flight, traced back to a loose GPS mount. The team resolved this by re-securing the Here4 module with vibration-dampening standoffs, which resolved the accuracy issue in the follow-up flight.

Media

[ Reference: heavy-lift hexacopter test flight ]

Next steps plan

Move into iterative flight tuning and refinement ahead of the competition.