AerosimRC Simulator

In order to develop muscle memory and learn how to properly control the mikrokopter, I needed to train on simulation software, helpfully provided as part of the Aerobot package. The software uses simple polygonal and sprite graphics without any need for a GPU, so even a netbook can run it, as long as you have Windows installed :P

At last at home, I was able to install it on our lounge laptop and run it over our wall-mounted projector. This was excellently immersive: everything was about the right size, and I got the appropriate sense of vertigo and confusion when I sent the 'copter high up. In particular I realised how easily disoriented one becomes when the 'copter is more than 30m away; it suddenly becomes very hard to make out the 'nose' and see which way it is pointing.

The training tasks were hard to start with, but after training for a few hours, and then trying again the next day, I found my muscle memory had improved significantly. The hardest thing by far was mentally switching gears between 'tail toward you' flight, where essentially you're operating in a spherical co-ordinate system centered on yourself, and you want to keep the MK's nose pointed along r; into 'nose-first' flight, where you deliberately transpose yourself to the MK's frame, and always fly 'forward', but need to yaw around so 'your' nose is pointed in the right direction. The former makes more sense if you play a lot of computer games, the latter if you have played with lots of RC helicopters. Of course, if you have a first-person-view camera onboard the 'copter, and you can see it in real-time, then 'nose-first' flight becomes very straightforward, if a little dangerous since you could lose sight of where you are.

The calibration for the simulation is not well-documented so I wrote a short guide to getting it working on a Windows 7 computer:

Download the software from http://www.aerosimrc.com/ccount/click.php?id=211. Plug the cable that looks like an audio jack into the 'DSC' port in the back of the transmitter, and then plug the USB dongle end into your Windows computer. Open Control Panel and click Hardware and Sound, then Devices and Printers. You should see the controller there as a 'Gaming Device'. Right-click on it and press Configure, then click Calibrate.

These screens are better set up for a joystick than for the RC controller, so some of the calibration bars will not move no matter what you change on the controller. So when it asks you to centre the controller, just put both sticks in the centre and click next. When it asks you to test e.g. the z-axis, just move both sticks in complete circles both ways, then click next. Don't worry about any of the silver switches, just keep them all clicked away from you.

When you're done calibrating, install and run the AerosimRC. You may see a calibration screen straight away, but if the program skips it, go to the menu at the top of the screen and click Controller, then Configuration, then  Config 'A'.

On the right, you will see a graphical representation of your two control sticks and a third for the unused FPV camera control. On the left, you'll see a series of available commands your controller can send. Turn off the tick boxes for everything except Aileron, Elevator, Throttle, and Rudder.

Wiggle each stick one axis at a time to figure out where it is currently configured to, and move it to the correct setting using the toggle buttons in the middle. (On my laptop, Aileron is the second toggle, Elevator the third, Throttle the first and Rudder the fourth.) You may also need to tick the reverse button on Elevator and Rudder. Click the green tick mark at the bottom-right of the screen to save the settings.

Now you can go back to the sandbox mode and play around with it for a little, or start some training, again accessed from the top menu. You can select various models to play with; ours is the Oktokopter XL.

 Some flight tips:

• Start the engines by pulling the throttle down and to the right, then back to the centre, easing the throttle up fairly quickly so that the kopter doesn't flip over.
• To land, make sure you have no lateral motion, hover a meter above the ground, then cut the engines by moving the throttle down and to the left. (Ground effect is not strong in the sim, but huge in real life!)
• Restart the training sim by pressing spacebar, if you lose the kopter. 
• Always keep the nose (the red prop on the sim) facing away from you; your controls will be much more intuitive. The final training sessions involve flying the kopter with the nose in different positions to test your handle on rotational transformation!