I Sent My Drone Sailboat on a Long Distance Mission

in my previous sailboat video I took this initial design that would just fall over and gave it a longer bulb Keel and a bigger Rudder I also installed an RD pilot flight controller to make this boat capable of running Waypoint missions all by itself and all those mods worked the boat was now able to sail in any direction relative to the wind all by itself and its upwind performance was surprisingly good so now that I have a working drone boat I want to find out what it's capable of so in this video I'm going to program in a long-distance Waypoint Mission and see if it can complete it all by itself the hole of this boat is fairly watertight but not perfect the seal between the fiberglass hole and the plywood deck is formed by compressing a foam strip around the edge after previous tests a small amount of water had leaked through into the hole so before sending this boat out into the water for several hours I wanted an extra layer of protection for that I taped around the seam with electrical tape to hopefully seal it a bit better then I brought it out to the lake on a stormy day for a worst case scenario water Ingress test I was also interested to see how it would perform in big waves [Music] this is how I sail my boat I take my thumb off the remote flip it in auto mode baby this is how a wing sail flies like sliding on a water slide flip it into auto mode [Music] baby all in all the performance was pretty good at least for a sub 1 meter boat the new extra-large Keel seemed to give it quite a bit of stability even in the high winds and waves the upwind performance was was still pretty good even while going into the swell I uploaded a few waypoints to see how it would do in auto mode and it seems to do really well that test was quite successful so now we're ready for the big [Music] mission will there be water that was a little bit of water not too bad though good morning today's a big day for our little sailboat friend here um there's a south wind the wind is coming from this direction and I've got a big Waypoint Mission planned it's going to hopefully tack all the way up into the wind past the boat ramp and over into that Bayway over there if the boat can successfully do the whole mission it'll be about 6 miles total so definitely the longest Mission I've done with this boat so far so it's going to kind of hug the shore here oops I didn't want to move that one and then once we get to this Bay it'll do a U-turn and go downwind wind all the way back to where we are now right now the wind is pretty calm but it's supposed to build throughout the course of the day all right let's get this thing in the water the issue now is that this Keel is really deep and the water is not that deep so I'm going to need to get my feet wet on so now I'm going to flip this switch here which puts the boat in auto mode and now it should be trying to follow the Waypoint Mission it's not going very fast at the moment let's see looks like it's doing 0.3 m/s but the wind wind is kind of in a wo right now it comes and goes what a view just gorgeous looks like it's making pretty good progress all right so now I'm going to pack up my things and head over to that dock right there so the fail safe and RDU pilot is set up so that when it loses uh the radio connection oh I actually see it right out there H it's going right along oh that's perfect um when it loses the radio connection it just keeps on going with the Waypoint Mission I have the radio turned off just to save battery so it's just in auto mode doing its own thing pulling up to the dock there it is I see it there it is you see it out there way in the distance it's pretty far out still but it's making its way over here the wind speed has definitely picked up quite a bit from when I put the boat in this morning but it's not too bad still and it looks like the water's not too choppy so that's good there it is right there just coming into view I'm going to go in here and increase the cross trck error so that it does bigger tacking zigzags that might help us get upwind faster looks like we're going to miss that buoy that's good I was concerned about hitting that the increased cross trck parameter does seem to make some sort of a difference that latest tack definitely looks like a bigger zigzag than the last one all right we've passed the dock our next destination is the boat ramp over there there it is I see it I think they're going to miss it actually I don't even see it where is that thing I don't see a sail oh there it is it's still by that white thing whatever that is floating out there wow spring is in full swing it appears there is quite a lot of gasoline in the water it's not great it is so far away and I'm already getting Telemetry data here I have the rfd900 Up on the Roof there and the antennas on the boat are like right down next to the water definitely not great antenna placement but it's still working that's pretty amazing these rowers are getting pretty close they're just kind of drifting down wind it looks like and I can see them looking at it yeah that dude's definitely checking it out o I think this whole lighter area right here is the gas these dudes over here just spilled it it's easy to get caught up in the fast-paced life of an autonomous boat Chaser but we have to remember it's very important to just chill every now and then and that's why I'm sitting on this bench I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's video which is better help better help is a service that connects you with a licensed therapist someone you can talk to about personal challenges anything that's been a burden to you lately or even just day-to-day life and how it's going many people don't realize that keeping your feelings and emotions bottled up inside can really have a big impact on your mental health having regular therapy sessions and just talking to someone can really help take the edge off and make you feel much more ated ease better helps therapists are licensed and trained to be great listeners that can give unbiased advice that can really help put you on the right mental track to get started you can go to the link in the description it's betterhelp.com slrc testflight the you answer a series of questions that helps better help match you with a professional therapist who has years of experience helping people just like you you'll be matched with a therapist usually within 48 hours so you can get started as soon as possible let better help help you squeeze therapy into your busy life in the most convenient way possible now back to the video we're about 2 hours into the Waypoint Mission now and it's still going strong it's making good good time I think I don't really know what to expect from this sort of thing I'm happy with the performance so far I'm really I'm actually quite amazed at how fast it's able to get up wind like I'm sure it's pretty bad compared to a real sale vat but for something of this size it seems impressive there's another tack why is it tacking so much that's abnormal I feel like it's heading right towards this oil spill yeah it's going right into the gas spill now I'm down to my last cookie this is a real problem I'm here on this peninsula right now and I think as the boat is getting closer this peninsula kind of blocks the wind waves from building so I think the water's flatter out there right now and that's probably causing it to go a little faster can you see it out there it's still going oh I hope it doesn't hit that buoy I think we missed it it definitely looks like our tacking angle has gotten a bit shallower since I increased that parameter this wind is really great for us it's kind of blowing offshore here so the water is so calm in this area but there's probably still quite a bit of wind speed out there though that's good for S it's getting really far away now so I'm going to drive over to the next Beach or something I see it there it is it's out by that buoy still making great progress still going pretty quick seems like this guy's headed over to have a look oh he's going to go right past it that's good it's going to get swamp by that wake what a dick it's doing the little tiny taxs again I think that must be because the wind is coming at an angle like this so it I you know it just the boat's really not going that fast um as you can see by the wind line here it's super offshore from where I am now so um the wind speeds right there might be pretty calm just sitting here in the car the attacks are getting bigger that's good I think it's just dependent on the wind direction the laptop batter is almost dead the camera's out of memory there's not really too much I can do now other than just go for a walk here and follow the boat on foot and enjoy these flowers and wait for it to come it's really far away or maybe that's a buoy oh no it's over there I see it okay speaking of chilling this seems like a pretty nice spot can you see it it's right right over there still killing it no sign of slowing down goose Beast it's hissing I feel like there's got to be some seaweed on the Keel or the rudder but then again I was thinking that when the boat tacks it really slows down before the motor turns on so maybe it kind of like backs up just enough to kind of loosen any seaweed that's stuck on there not sure and we're just going to try and make it all the way to the other end of the bay it's kind of entering into this same exact Bay where I did my rotary sail boat if you remember that oh that was a huge bubble there's some chonkers look at the size of that thing that's bigger than me the boat is there and the mission turns around right there so we're getting pretty close to the Midway Point holy crap it's coming right for me these trees are so nice it's about to pop po looks like the wind is pretty blocked from all these trees over here all these beautiful trees AR she blows I might hit a wind Shadow here at the far side of the bay we must be getting super close to the final Waypoint we're here at the other side of the bay and I feel like it's going to hang a right and then go right into these poles oh there we go I think it just hit one of the two fin final way points it kind of does like a U-turn it's pretty crazy that it started at that bridge way off in the distance like 5 and 1/2 hours ago and I have not touched it since okay let's go look at the computer and see how fast it's going it appears to be moving pretty quick My Hope Is that it's not sinking Ian it doesn't really look like it is but it also doesn't look super high in the water so it's doing well over 1 M pers second pretty much straight down wind so it's not going to take all that long to get back I ran out of water getting thirsty there it is out there absolutely ripping it's kind of getting a crosswind right now not it's not pure Tailwind all right I'm back to the boat ramp and it's way off in the distance coming our way so I looked at the data coming through the Telemetry link and it looks like it's got a slight headwind it's pretty close to 90° but I should have programmed the home word mission to come closer to the shore since it's not doing any tacking we're going on 7 hours so we're almost back to this dock that I was at earlier there's no parking on this side of the road so I think I'm just going to go past the dock all the way down to the park we started at we're back here at the original launching point but I think the boat is still it's probably about at that dock right there it's still pretty far away oh there's a speed booat behind it um going about 0.7 is m/s the battery is down to 14.5 which isn't all that that low so it could probably go quite a bit further incredible I cannot believe it but there was not even any seaweed or lake weed trapped on the Keel I'm sure there's going to be water inside I think it probably gets through this 3D print or yeah we'll see we'll take it home and open it up four so yeah I guess just over 7 hours oh look at that there's some condensation inside the electronics box oh yeah there is some water down there not a whole lot but just a little wow I am so hungry it's been a long day I was out here for way longer than I expected to but the boat did great so I'm super stoked was a long Mission it went so far yeah very pleased with the results now I'm going to go eat some food and figure out what the next mission will be at the end of the mission the boat still had plenty of battery left so its max range is probably twice as far if not more and if I could get it to more reliably turn up wind without needing a little bump from the motor then it would probably be able to sail for several days on end although I have a feeling it would not be the best platform for long missions like that because the Keel would probably end up catching some seaweed I was pretty surprised I didn't have any issues with that on this Mission thanks to all the art pilot contributors who make these open source autopilot systems accessible to people like me if you want to see more videos like this click on the Subscribe button and the notification Bell that's all for now thanks for watching bye [Music]

Channel: rctestflight

Views: 167,113

Keywords: ardupilot, drone, sailboat, autonomous, rc, model, americas cup, waypoint, rctestflight

Id: tEhTNxBCPdQ

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2024