Sensors

[giovaniceotto]

To aid in exporting different flight information, such as pressure at a specific point along the fuselage during flight or an acceleration as if measured by an accelerometer at a particular orientation mounted at a particular location in the rocket, this issue proposes the implementation of a Sensor abstract class, along if modifications to the Rocket and Flight class to interface with it.

Proposed Usage Example

from rocketpy import Rocket, Flight

from rocketpy.sensors import Accelerometer

test_rocket = Rocket(...)

nose_cone_accel = Accelerometer(
    orientation=(1, 0, 0),
    sample_rate=100,
    saturation_values=(-160, 160),
    accuracy=1e-3,
    noise=...,
)

test_rocket.add_sensor(
    sensor=nose_cone_accel,
    position=(x, y, z)
)

def throttle_control():
    if nose_cone_accel.current_value[0] > 100:
        # To fast, throttle_down
        ...      

test_rocket.add_discrete_controller(
    controller=throttle_control
    refresh_rate=100
)  

test_flight = Flight(...)

nose_cone_accel.export_data('accel.csv')

Requirements

1. Support for the following types of sensors:

   • Clock
   • Accelerometer
   • Gyroscope
   • Magnetometer
   • Barometer
   • Thermometer (optional but desired)
   • PitotTube (optional but desired)
   • Luminosity (optional but desired)

2. Support for the following methods/properties:

   • Sensor.current_value: to be used during flight by controllers
   • Sensor.export_data: to be used after flight

3. Each sensor should be able to emulate:

   • Saturation limits
   • Noise
   • Accuracy
   • Malfunction (random defective values if specified)

Proposed Architecture

Create a submodule rocketpy.sensors. The submodule should have at least the following classes:

• Sensor(abc)
• Accelerometer(Sensor)
• Gyroscope(Sensor)
• Magnetometer(Sensor)
• Barometer(Sensor)

Proposed Milestone

This feature should be implemented in a major release with a better support for continuous and discrete controllers, along with a refactoring of the Flight class.

Therefore, it can be released with v2.0.0.

Context

This idea was first proposed by @Lucas-KB. It was a great idea and we are excited to implement it!