Discussions

Hi Gang, I'm a new guy here with a good background in electronics, computers, and RC vehicles. I have a lot of reading to do, but wanted to start off by introducing myself and giving a general overview of my project.

I work for a company that searches for historic shipwrecks (hoping to find Spanish Galleons loaded with silver and gold). Over the years, I have ran into many situations where traditional survey methods (boat-towed instruments) weren't feasible. Examples here are a small fresh water lake containing a historic WWII aircraft crash, but didn't allow motorized vehicles on the water. I built a small RC boat to haul around my Humminbird sonar unit and located the aircraft that way, Often times the shifting sand bars which originally caused the ship to wreck are too shallow to run a boat over today, even though the area may have been 15-30 feet deep 500 years ago.

We generally tow large and heavy magnetometers and sonar units to locate shipwrecks. I have access to a much smaller, lighter magnetometer (measures minute changes in the earth's magnetic field caused by iron objects like cannons and anchors) which can easily be flown under a traditional RC aircraft. Generally a shipwreck would consist of a large pile of cannons and several anchors, Due to the shoals and sand bars in my area of interest, no survey has ever been conducted here and many shipwrecks are known to have occurred in the area.

The specs are likely remedial for this forum, an RC plane that can fly around 20 MPH hauling a few pounds of extra gear. The autonomous part would need to fly the drone over a pre-programmed course of lanes spaced about 30 feet apart in a lawn-moving fashion. After it finishes it's survey grid it could fly to a meeting point and I could land it manually. Floats or a seaplane are pretty much required, have been toying with the ideas of a large Telemaster on floats or the new 72" (?) drone from Nitroplanes.com

There are areas of dry sand banks and small islands that need to be covered as well, so a boat would not be a good solution. Our mag can see the types of iron deposits we are looking for from better than 50 feet, so if I can fly 30 foot lanes at 10 feet AGL under 20 miles per hour I will see it if it is there.

As i said, I have a lot of reading to do on autonomous guidance systems, but if anyone feels benevolent and would like to help me start fleshing out what will be required, I'd be very appreciative. I'm not afraid to do my own homework, but you guys know the merits and pitfalls of the different systems and could likely save me a lot of time.

I'll update this thread as I go too, and thanks in advance for any early advice.

Jason