Sailboats and drones

[Will Gilmore]

DJI changes their software about every 6 weeks and it's very far from open source.

It could be about the hardware, then. A controller function call will remain the same until the controller codes are redesigned. I get that there is usually an interpreter layer in between, but the controllers can be addressed directly. However, it sounds like the best approach is to contract to the company instead of selling to consumers who want to keep their software up to date.
I have been out of that kind of work for years now. Programming is fun but IT is horrible and I'll stick to art and wood and farming and sailing, thank you very much.

- Will (Dragonfly)

 

[Meriachee]

Write it.

Not much chance of that ever happening, just like there's any chance of buying a jet ski. There's little parallel between microcode in a fast processor and a smoking 2 stroke.

 

[Gunni]

My plan was to drop the dink in the water, stand off the boat and operate the drone from a fixed position on the dink. Can I reliably expect the drone to RTH on a 10ft dinghy?

 

[markwbird]

The best solution is to develop your pilot skills. These things can be flown manually so you don't have to fight the computer. I have flown RC planes for years so I have seen how lots of folks will develop their skills to a certain level where they can get the plane up and down (most of the time) and never really hone their craft. I would not try to catch a drone by hand. Those blades are formidable. How about a big fishing net? Just reach out and scoop it up. Maybe just a big loose tarp draped over the stern pulpit that you could drop into.

 

[Meriachee]

My plan was to drop the dink in the water, stand off the boat and operate the drone from a fixed position on the dink. Can I reliably expect the drone to RTH on a 10ft dinghy?

No. RTH is based on a GPS position and the dink will move. The Mavic even orients itself to where it left from.
When you tell it to RTH, it stops, checks the height and adjusts accordingly, goes back to about where it left from, orients itself so it's facing in the same compass direction it was facing when it left, then comes down to about 4 feet or so, verifies the GPS location, and does a ground based proximity landing from there. If it's windy, the little thing does a zillion corrections in that last 4 feet. It's quite amazing to watch.

 

[Meriachee]

Having said all that, you have a perfectly suitable gimbal on the drone. There are a bunch of "handheld" mounts for the Mavic, and any of then could easily be adapted to a mount that could be put in the dink. Sailavie experimented with hanging a camera off the dink, casting it free and then sailing by it. The gimbal in the drone would get rid of any bouncy that the dink would try to inject.

 

[Gunni]

How do you figure they got that vid of Emmaline and recovered the drone?

 

[Meriachee]

Luck? There's a guy who does time lapse off a cargo ship and he shows all kinds of places. He had a Phantom for a while. Got some pretty good video too, but there's the trouble with water. At least if you dig a trench with it in a field, or on a beach, you can get most of it back and maybe it's repairable.
What they're not telling you is that the chances of catching the thing if the boat is charging along at 10kts, is virtually nil, so you need to factor in coming to pretty much stopped before you grab the thing.

 

[Gunni]

Dead stick landing! Yikes. I’ll be in flight school for months!

 

[JRT]

So I'm a pretty good RC pilot, been doing it since the 90s and train people on planes, helicopters and line of sight quads. I've actually never flown DJI products but have watched them plenty, including some pretty neat stuff this weekend on a DJI Spark. That said is the limitation of the DJI landing related to some sort of auto landing mode that most non pilots use all the time. I know about the return to home locked by GPS, which would be bad on the water for sure if the 'land' is gone. I assumed that if I have a clear landing zone, something like a platform on a rail on the stern, that I could reasonably and safely bring a quad / DJI Spark into a landing manually unless there is some sort of safety technology that prevents me from actually manually landing a DJI quad.

 

[jssailem]

Drones or RC aircraft..
SO much fun...

 

[Michael Davis]

Dead stick landing!

That's how we learned to fly tail-draggers when I was young! Watched the Daily Live show this morning (Volvo Ocean Race.Com) and they flew one in the studio to show how they landed on the boats.

 

[jon hansen]

one could attach a 3 to 5 foot dowel to the base of the drone to grab when landing on a sailboat i suppose. fiberglass whip antenna, cain fish pole,

easy peasy

 

[agprice22]

How about simply flying the drone into a net? The forward obstacle avoidance can be turned off. The aircraft must be stationary to land. But you could essentially crash into a net, stop the motors, and bring the drone aboard. I do not know whether you could break the rotors or the motors. The rotors fold, so I think they would be ok. You could use the gimble guard to protect the camera.

 

[Jackdaw]

Everyone that I know who is good at this is simply a very good drone pilot. They fly it under manual control back to the boat coming up on the transom, and grab it when it gets to the rail. While the Auto SW will get better and better, the multiple and random axis of motion on both the boat and drone, along with the obstacles it would encounter before landing (backstay(s), boom, radar mast, davits, sail) make that too risky for a long time. The short-mid term solution is to get better flying. A well though out pair of gloves is also a good idea.

 

[JRT]

I'm a way better more experienced RC pilot then a sailor so I feel pretty confident I could easily land on a boat, I've just never even tried DJI as they are not really the type of flying / skills I'm interested in. They know their market well, and it works DJI has brought in a lot of new blood to the hobby, but it also has brought a lot of bad PR too.

That said, this thread has got me thinking of what it could provide besides an annoying photo / video platform. Huntsville Alabama has a pretty large drone expertise that most people don't know about. I'm seriously considering a DJI Spark as a test bed for some ideas mostly because the software looks well thought out and now I know a few serious RC Pilots are exploring these with different and unique applications, sailing could be next.

 

[Gunni]

Oh, she's going to love her new set of boat gloves!

 

[agprice22]

Yes, grabbing it is really not difficult. The drone is super steady, and it is easy to match the speed of the boat. I face the stern, fly it up using my right hand, grab it with my left, and shut it down with my right. No problems.

 

[LeslieTroyer]

Are we going to start seeing folks like @Jackdaw start using drones in racing to check wind conditions on the next leg. Add on responsibility for tactition - or do PHRF/IOR type bodies already ban such data gathering???

Les

 

[Will Gilmore]

Are we going to start seeing folks like @Jackdaw start using drones in racing to check wind conditions on the next leg. Add on responsibility for tactition - or do PHRF/IOR type bodies already ban such data gathering???

Quote from The ISAF RACING RULES of SAILING
AMERICA’S CUP EDITION
"41 OUTSIDE HELP
A yacht shall not receive help from any outside source, except
(a) help for the removal of an injured or ill person. Once a person has been removed
from the yacht, that person shall not be returned or replaced;
(b) after a collision, help from the crew of the other yacht or vessel to get clear;
(c) unsolicited information from a disinterested source that is not received via electronic
means, which may be another yacht in the same race;
(d) communication via RO Comms with the Race Officer and umpires and another
yacht in the same race;
(e) after a capsize, help to recover the yacht;
(f) satellite navigation systems used solely to ascertain the yacht’s position including
“aiding” signals such as DGPS (differential GPS), SBAS (space-based
augmentation signals), or RTK (real time kinematic) correction data."
I believe drone data would be considered outside help. I could be wrong, but I think I remember someone making that statement in another thread weeks ago.

- Will (Dragonfly)