AP for sailing vessel

Hello everybody,

I have read about ardupilot and how it works. I would like to dvelop a pilot for a sailing vessel.
There are several points that make me doubt about using ardupilot, but maybe you can resolve them:

with very low windspeed the output of a GPS in terms of heading are 0 (below 2 knots).
that would leave the AP to rely on the gyros only that may suffer from substantial drift.

Would it be better to use a 3-axis magnetometric sensor in addition to the gyroboard?
That would make the AP less dependant with the inaccuracies if the GPS.

Is it possible ti integrate this kind of sensor into the arduino pilot? And how would one do it?
Maybe there is already someone who has done that?

Cheers, and let me know !

Andreas

Ardupilot is actually on the water already (albeit modified and a motor driven one). GPS will pick up the below 2 knots speed but the accuracy may or may not make it look like it not moving. I personally think the APM would cope more than adequately with this situation if you modified some of the coding to your purpose.
Your thrust is not like ours so you would need to re-work all the thrust stuff to get your sails to function correctly (whether you use an eclipse type rig or a more standard sail setup is your choice)
The GPS could prove to be an overworry if you are in a nice area for sats but before worrying about changing that part I'd get the basic controls sorted. Then hopefully the dGPS thread will be huge and have a working model so you can put units either end and have the master controller sending the GPS info into the APM.

As for your suggestions of magnetos I shall have to leave that to someone more knowledged in sailing and AP. Of course this is just my opinion but I think its possible with effort.

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Ritchie October 23, 2010 at 3:21pm

Ardupilot is actually on the water already (albeit modified and a motor driven one). GPS will pick up the below 2 knots speed but the accuracy may or may not make it look like it not moving. I personally think the APM would cope more than adequately with this situation if you modified some of the coding to your purpose.
Your thrust is not like ours so you would need to re-work all the thrust stuff to get your sails to function correctly (whether you use an eclipse type rig or a more standard sail setup is your choice)
The GPS could prove to be an overworry if you are in a nice area for sats but before worrying about changing that part I'd get the basic controls sorted. Then hopefully the dGPS thread will be huge and have a working model so you can put units either end and have the master controller sending the GPS info into the APM.

As for your suggestions of magnetos I shall have to leave that to someone more knowledged in sailing and AP. Of course this is just my opinion but I think its possible with effort.
Logan Greenlee October 23, 2010 at 1:38pm

I would suggest you develop a new autopilot for this project. The problem space is quite different.

From a sensor perspective you will need wind speed, wind angle sensors.

The outputs of your pilot will control things like sail trim and you will need to have a mission planning component because it's quite possible that you "can't get here from here".

These are all things that ardupilot does not do today, I don't really see an easy way for you to integrate this kind of capability if you are not part of the dev team.

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AP for sailing vessel

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