Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on February 13, 2012 at 5:44am

At this moment, I haven't yet taken the final choice...A this moment, the pattern continu to expand along an area up to a max distance (radius in meters) from the SARSEC trigger point, so as to cover the entire surface. Today, I think that it seems better to do a GPS lock of the centroïd position for the petals with a small shifting in angle. This not yet implemented. What do you think ?

Regards, Jean-Louis

Comment by Michael Pursifull on February 13, 2012 at 5:57am

I have some small experience with running ground search patterns ... and I do mean "running" .. but what I did was not for rescue, and I definitely do not feel that I can offer an opinion. I think what you have done, with all of each of these features, is very exciting, just as they are. One of the beautiful things about this community and hobby is it constantly challenges me to learn more. I had thought to look into search patterns, with a mind towards figuring out how to apply them to this hobby but I thought that would be 18 months to two years away. Now, I am looking up things like Expanding Square Pattern, Victor Sierra Pattern, Parallel or Creeping Line Pattern, Trackline Search, Sector Search, and First Responder Search. I find myself reading about search flight patterns discussed in Garmin's SAR Pilot's guide (http://www.capmembers.com/media/cms/Garmin_SAR_Software_Pilots_Guid...) and in US Coast Guard documents, and other sources from Google. Wonderful (your work, and this community, both.)

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on February 13, 2012 at 6:03am

Here, below, a video of a real test flight of a SAR pattern with an onboard video, that I have done with an early version of the ThermoPilot and the Cularis in Oct 2010:

Regards, Jean-Louis

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on February 13, 2012 at 6:07am

Here some possible search patterns:

Regards, Jean-Louis 

Comment by Michael Pursifull on February 13, 2012 at 6:09am

I wonder if, having looked at the basic use cases and terms, maybe some combination of in-firmware and in-GCS patterns would not be helpful in the near term. these "one touch"/firmware-based patterns are very useful, but I can also see more patterns built into Mission Planner, since you can enter many parameters... to expand on the "grid", maybe have quick patterns like those found at the links on this site and like those built into this software used by SAR/Coast Guard teams. Of course, I am also looking at these patterns for non-resue purposes. I suspect we can find many uses for them, things like more photography patterns that just grid (to help with 3D mapping, perhaps, where circling around at different angles and overlapping like what you have shown would be very useful) or for a scripted airshow, for example. 

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on February 13, 2012 at 6:15am

Here a very interesting concept of a reco UAV developped by the NASA which uses the dynamic soaring to reduce drastically the required energy to sustain the UAV flight. This can be also implemented on the ThermoPilot...

Regards, Jean-Louis

Comment by Russkel on February 13, 2012 at 6:55am

Wow this is very impressive stuff.

Forgive my ignorance, are these changes able to be merged into the official ArduPilot codebase?

Developer Comment by Jean-Louis Naudin on February 13, 2012 at 9:15am

These changes that I have done on the original ArduPlane v2.28 firmware are to much dedicated to soaring and thermal hunting for gliders UAV and not for general purposes (planes), so at this moment, I prefer to follow a different track to keep in mind my primary objective of this ThermoPilot project and not to diverge into general applications...

Jean-Louis

Comment by robert bouwens on February 13, 2012 at 12:16pm

jean-louis,

the patterns you showed are ok for search and rescue and aerial fotography pattern. but there is no need to do so for a 'thermal hunter'.

the regular slope soaring is straight forward.

but a thermal uplift is a moving target (wind). thus there is a need to insert a recursive pattern to fly out of a thermal lift.

http://www.anla.gr/greek/library/soaring/84-1997-02.pdf

regards robert

t

 

Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on February 13, 2012 at 12:31pm

Cooperation by several vehicles and rapid relay of images to the surface ought to create a fast STFM map that can be updated as images arrive. SAR is a very interesting application. There is a paid for version of photosynth that addresses some SAR elements. Its all situational awareness!

At a SAR scene it might just be very handy to have an airframe that can loiter in an area acting as a radio relay. So sitting on a working slope might just be perfect for that.

Less landings, less accidents.

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