I’m a 61 year old man who is known for being able to fix or fabricate anything. Unfortunately “everything” is currently limited to wood and metal working and mechanical things like cars, trucks, farm machinery etc. I am soooo impressed with your abilities with computers, 3D printers and pretty much everything you do in your videos. Seriously, I think people like you with your abilities, curiosity and thirst for knowledge are beyond impressive. You inspire me very much.
They are extremely difficult to ride. Especially if you don't already know how to surf/skate/wakeboard/etc.. One thing you seem to have mastered is safetly falling off. You often see surfers 'wipe out' and it looks totally random, but there is often some serious last second movements to aviod injury. Keep it up. Feels amazing once you get good.
I am proficient at Wing foiling, and i feel sometimes already knowing how to surf or wakeboard can be a hindrance in initial progression (those sports relay a lot on back foot pressure). On the are there hand skiing and powder which Riley is an expert, can be a real help. I came from snowboarding to foiling and being able to be efficient on the pitch control on deeper conditions translate almost 1:1 to foiling. Keep the good work @rctestflight this would be my favorite upload yet. Foiling rules
What's funny is that you watch youtubers lose their cameras to the ocean every week, and here a genius solves the problem by waterproofing and strapping a plastic bottle to his cam and control equipment. Should make the rest of realize where we sit in the chain of intelligence really.
to pump foil you need to see-saw your feet: every motion is front-foot-first. Imagine each foot is in a different car of a rollercoaster, they're following the same path through the arc, but at different times. or it's like skate boarding over a bump.
It looks like it behaves more like a bicycle. If you want to turn, yaw as you found out will cause an adverse roll the other way. However, to keep the board stable in the turn the stem needs to be leaned over such that the force remains directly down through the stem. So... to turn left, yaw right, allow the board to "fall" in the direction of turn (left) and then steer (left) into it to stop the roll. If you watch the boarders when doing a tight turn they are leaned over and to get out of the roll they kick the board to yaw it INTO the roll. Just like a "push steer" on a bike.
You're right, except it lacks any of the automatic correction you get from the front fork of a bike. That's what makes it so difficult to master, it's not helping you by self stabilizing.
@@chrisblake4198 Also lacks the gyroscopic effects on stability and control. It does gain the water surface/plain tension though. I wonder if there was a way to implement the "trailing" effect of the front fork "rake angle". Would it be as simple as a smaller hydrofoil out in front like a rudder? Mounted in such a way that it will naturally migrate towards "understeer" such as the rake on a motorcycle or "easy rider" bicycle. Something I only learnt recently, but professional race bikes have almost zero rake. I was a mountain bike guy and have ridden straight forked bikes, but never directly down forks. Some pro racing bikes have nearly vertical forks and only a small curve out at the bottom. They are known to be incredibly responsive, incredibly low drag but also incredible unstable. Not wise to ride them "no handed!"
Roll control could be achieved with a flywheel with axis of rotation parallel to the board. Just a motor so could control acceleration reasonably well and change inertia of flywheel thus amount of influence on the roll
I’ve worked with sensors and microcontrollers on my free time for a couple of years and it usually takes so much time for small benefit. I like how you just “I just add these and those sensor and now it works”. Kudos for mastering them without bragging
More drag would be created by underwater control surfaces. propulsion maybe, but for some reason I think axis control above water would be more efficient.
I realise you don’t want to cut into your expensive foil. But wouldn’t control surfaces under water give a more direct control? And could help you when standing on it.
You should consider heading up to Lake Ballinger. There is a local group of pump foilers that frequently ride at the boat ramp there. They have skills, knowledge and the best pump foil gear available. It's a great crew that I got to foil with while on vacation one day last summer.
yaw props behind center of mass will do roll in altered direction of front props. Maybe it will in during video i wrote it at 10:00 i mean rear props will push in front and do yaw in same way as front and roll will be compensated over all.
As an RC enthusiast and someone who rode an e-foil for the firs time last year, I am incredibly impressed by this video. Extremely fascinating. Keep it up!
This is similar to my senior design project in school. Look up "UF Unmanned Foil" on UA-cam, we added control surfaces to the tail wing and modeled it as a delta-wing in the controller. It was great to see your take on an unmanned hydrofoil! Always hoped I'd see someone try the active weight shifting method.
As a flight control engineer and wing foiler who has that same slingshot foil kit this was one of the most entertaining UA-cam videos I've ever seen! A couple comments, that particular front wing has excellent lift but because of the low aspect ratio and wide span it's slow, and sluggish to turn. That's part of the reason why the roll control with the linear actuator didn't work well. With that wing you usually keep your stance offset to get more leverage over the wing to turn. If you tried a higher aspect wing it'd be twitchyer, you might have better luck with roll control. Another thing to keep in mind is the CG setup is a huge factor on performance. Everything should center around the center of lift on the front foil otherwise your going to have real difficulty turning smoothly. Really amazing the engineering that went into this, awesome job. Also thank you for supporting open source and publishing your CAD files!
That was very cool. The shots of the foil underwater were really neat. I like how you kept pushing and trying different things to get to this result. Looking forward to your summer board riding. 👍🏻
Awesome project! I was watching the roll control part and said outloud, move it back to the tail. I only know that from years of riding foils that the back foot controls the roll. Haha! It would be really cool to use that rig to test foils with. Then we could get much more controlled data on foil setups. Right now it's all about the way foils "feel" and very little standards to measure complete foil performance in the real world. How cool would it be to make a rc rig that would pump a foil! Imagine the data we could get from that! As always, thanks for the great content!
"The 1930 Robertson Waterplane ground-effect vehicle powered by an outboard motor". There are pictures and videos, but I don't think I can post a pic in the comments. I saw this the other day and immediately thought this might be something you'd build or at least be interested in knowing existed, if you don't already. In other news... it's getting to be grass cutting season. I hope you are working on your next autonomous mower contraption. I'm a long time subscriber to the channel and grateful for your willingness to share your talents with the world. Keep up the great work! - Stanford
Amazing job! Foils are REALLY hard to balance. Even more so in open water with waves and wakes and such. Almost constant adjustments as the conditions change from flat to up the wave to down the wave, etc. Very challenging for us older guys. Kids take to it almost instantly, frustrating. Riding a foil board, pitch is controlled by weight shift forward and back. At the precise balance point where you aren't having to push down with either leg to balance you can go from riding on the water to flying with a slight shift of your hips and no other movement or speed/power applied. Pumping is the hardest for sure. You did well .
I applaud your ingenuity and out of the box approach to problem solving. I’m wondering whether due to the density of water, if rather than controlling the movement with propellers above the board, if real time micro adjustments to the underwater foil’s angle of attack, based on height above the water would be a more elegant and efficient way to control the movement. I’d be delighted to collaborate.
For inspiration you can look to foiling boats and catamarans. In terms of independence between speed and pitch/height you should probably be vectoring the thrust depending on how high the board is using a rotating engine mount. This would increase efficiency. In terms of making it work for a human though, adding engines onto the foil instead of props in the air would be the superior method. Ideally the batteries should be a part of the board i think. Though cooling would probably become a problem as the board in flight doesn't contact the water. The ESCs would probably be cooled the easiest if they were on the foil somehow. With you on top of it you dont need to think about controls at all. You changing your center of mass would be controlling the board. Also tweaking the distance between the foils, their location relative to the center of the board and their size has a large impact on how the board behaves. This is something you didn't include in the video, and that probably could have made your pitch problems easier to solve. Also depending on how big, heavy and fast your human carrying board ends up being, you might want to look at foil designs for kitefoiling or windfoiling as the speeds there are higher and in windsurfing the weight is way higher as well. Oh and get yourself a impact vest. It makes a world of difference when falling at high speeds. Though they aren't as good floatation devices in my experience.
This is a great project. What’s funny is that by the time it was stable, you basically made a drone that probably could have flown without the hydrofoil! I’ve been learning to wake foil in boat wake, and these foils are definitely not stable. The yaw/roll coupling is very weird. Makes me wonder why no one has made a foil with dihedral in the wing?
This guy is so bad ass. I have a CNC machine now and a bunch of 3D printers and tools. Learned Alibre and Plasticity and have been getting good with precision parts. Still a long way to go but this dude is my inspiration. Keep it up!
7:20 you can clearly see what the issue is: Momentum is having more effect here than the weight shift. If you want to make roll-control with weight, you better use a reaction control via a spinning mass.
100% same exact thought! Actually two reaction wheels. (roll, pitch) Think the sifting weight was also a bit too far forward. Should've been between main wing, and the mask. (near, but above the centre of mass when foiling)
He's getting unintended roll because the two props he's using for forward and Yaw are tilted up so much. Whenever he applies yaw, part of the yawing force is applied upward, producing roll.
@@theflyingfish66 yeah but that's not what's happening here. The movement of the mass is accelerating instead of decelerating the roll and thus tilt, because the shift has more authority than the weight shift in this short timeframe. So the "fix" for the now accelerated tilt is accelerating it more by shifting faster, which ultimately let's the mass hit end of travel. But at this time the tilt is already unrecoverable.
You're a genius happy to watch your endeavors. I find your videos are the only ones I can watch all the way through and not bounce. So much crap out there. Rc-er here just been out because of health and monetary issues associated with that. Keep it up!
Your airfoil has no dihedral. Therefore, no lateral stability with a very high center of gravity. Why not make a foil on your 3 d printer and put in a few degrees of dihedral and see the effects. Or change the current airfoil with higher lift on the ends to see if that improves your stablity. Love the videos, Keep them coming.
5 thrusters for 4 dof.. from under to over actuated - a water thruster will remove pitch coupling- and if fully above the foil-plane will eliminate steady state ventilation of the foil (dynamic hopping will still be a thing).
I absolutely cannot do electrical engineering, or wiring for that matter, but I thoroughly enjoy seeing the outcome of someone that uses their knowledge. I ended up being a carpenter because it was what I enjoyed problem solving, and I can see that here. Bravo! P.S. I fell in love with carpentry in Snoqualmie. I learned my love of the craft on the very lakefronts you test on. It was 2007-ish, so long ago.....
Control surfaces on the back of the main spar? Like an upper and a lower rudder for better control of which way it wants to twist during maneuvers? Cool stuff!
Super interesting video! However, I am wondering why you added all these propellers above the water level, instead of just using some actuators beneath the water on the hydrofoil itself. Seems like it would be way simpler and give you more control. Would also get rid of all these dangerous spinning blades...
Great video and project. It was impressive to see you riding one and controlling the other, talk about multitasking. So many of your projects inspire me but I don't have your natural abilities, so I watch.
Long time Kite / wing / surf foiler here, from my experience I think you should try using more counter steering with the props in the front. It should have been possible to get it working with just the weight shifter over the center of gravity and 3 props at the front for differential steering and speed+ height control. The sideways props to help the weight shifter are a genius hotfix but shouldn't be necessary. When you initiate a turn, you can do it by the roll axis, i.e the weight shifter, and by rudder; the differntial motors. But like a bicycle, if you want to initiate a left turn, you (mostly subconsciously) turn the handlebars slightly to the right for a short moment, which makes the bike ride to the right under your body, which makes it easier to "fall" into the left leaning for the left turn. There are nice videos about counter steering with bicycles, showing that you need the ability to steer right to initiate a left turn. Like "The counter intuitive physics of turning a bike" by minute physics. Same goes here with the foil board, and its the same for initiating a turn or getting out of a turn. If the board is leaning to the left alot and you want to get it back to level, you should steer right with the weight shifter, but left with the rudder; the differential steering with the props. In the video it looks like you tried getting the board level again by both steering the weight and the differential thrust to the same direction, or at least kept the heading straight while steering max with the weight shifter, which didn't help and didn't worked. Please try it out, as it is something you can try without rebuilding, just tempering with the steering programming, or try it manually. Would be interesting to see if this is enough to stop using the sideway props to help the weight shifter. They just look like unnecessary overkill to me, lol. Ah, yeah, in your demonstration at 5:21 you clearly showed mapping left weight shift together with the right prop turning on; which is basically rudder left. So you basically try to steer it like a car and force the balance, when you should use counter steering to balance and steer it like a bike.
By far my favourite uploader! Well done mate! I always love seeing how you troubleshoot and then overcome said problem with real outside the box thinking. Great job 👏👏👏👍👍
Like some other commenters have pointed out, a foil board has roll control via countersteer. However, my understanding of the dynamics of foil boarding suggest a unicycle a closer analog than a bicycle. Probably even closer would be a foiling windsurfer because of your aerodynamic roll control. You successfully created a vehicle with a very unique set of lift/thrust/stability interactions. Your projects are so interesting and admirable!!
from my experience (attempting) to ride foils yaw is controlled by they inverse yaw couple, if you want to roll right you yaw left (just like a bicycle) then once you are at the correct roll angle for your trun you can hold it and execute the turn (again just like a bicycle). you really don't have separate yaw and roll control as a rider
I watched your videos and recently moved to Washington State Seattle, immediately recognized nature and realized that now I can one day see your inventions on the water or in the sky
Brilliant!! As a foiler I appreciate the effort put into learning to fly. Come up with a jet propulsion system that is affordable like foil drive and look out !
Social media definitely makes that stuff look easy. I mean I can ride almost any board with ease but that’s from like a decade and a half of riding them lol. Pure muscle memory at this point. 100% bust my ass all the time, but now with the added adult fear of dying! Social media is just the highlights. Love the brave bottle quad! Used to fly over water and have to hunt for info on waterproofing and safety with my FPV quads. As shown you can get some neat footage if you’re prepared to dive and man had no fear immediate send!
Well done you!! ❤ I wager you could rig control surfaces on the foils themselves. E-foiling - wing foiling. wind foiling - kite foiling, will all become accessible to millions. You are a hero.
In 2024 a novice engineer can single handedly design and build a perfect stabilized underwater plan. The Wright brothers would shed a tear of joy for how far engineering principles have come. This is a perfect example of it.
Very cool, you could also build the equivalent to controllable ailerons and rudder to the foil itself leaving the board clean and ridable. You would need a drone type controller to aim for level etc.
I never told you this ---- BUT, You are Amazing !!!! I love watching your videos, Your thought process is so far ahead of the average person its awesome to watch you think (way) outside the Box....
13:05 dang, wish I knew about the secret Drown floatation bottle when i crashed mine into a river. thats genius. I know water barely hurts its after a drone was left outside for 4 months, and/or crashed into snow a bunch. (just dry it a bit and it works)
Board is good for pumpfoil, in the shots you got the balance and start right but you didn't generate enough front foot pressure. Just in case you wanna try this again. Thanks for sharing this very interesting project.
0:52 drones don't need gyros to fly. Tons of FPV/Racing pilots turn off all the sensors(gyro/accel/imu) and the drone is flown with raw human-to-motor input. If you want it to self level,,,yes it will need sensors
Pat pend prop inverted graph because flat edge at high speed is a wall and just drag. There are diff needs/ behavior at diff speeds. Low needs small angle of attack, high needs large.
I have some ideas. Add ailerons to the hydrofoil wing. Add an elevator and rudder to the tail. Add a thruster to the mast just above the wing. It will be more efficient to have the trust and control surfaces under water. Then put a waterproof control box in or on the board to protect the electronics.
When foiling I keep the foil and mast underneath me using short-term horizontal rotations. I think of it more like an inverted pendulum problem. Making turns left or right (I mean planning the path I want to take) is done by counter-steering a little bit and letting the lift push you around. (A lot like riding a bicycle!) I think this is the same effect that you observed before implementing the weight shift control mode. It would be neat to see this control model investigated.
FWIW yaw -> opposite roll coupling in the context of a balancing craft = counter steering. It's how bicycles and motorcycles really almost anything that actually "balances" works. If you want to initiate a left turn you will need a lean (roll) to the left that is appropriate to the speed/turn radius. To initiate that left lean, you first drive the balancing point out to the right. On a bicycle/motorcycle you counter steer right (thus an actual small right yaw as viewed from above), to initiate a left turn, then turn back left only to match the turn radius/lean angle. Your weight shift mechanism was less effective for the same reason it is when you try to ride without hands on a bike, cept the foil doesn't have the self righting ability of a bicycle (provided by rake/trail and a little bit of gyroscopic precession which actually countersteers to stay upright) so it eventually just it just falls over. Instead of a weight shift, it might be interesting to use a reaction wheel mounted horizontally, so you can actually take advantage of the yaw -> opposite roll coupling. I suspect this is really what folks are doing when they ride a foil aggressively. Twisting one way to initiate a turn the opposite way.
This video reminds me of so many of my own experiments, a proportion of which got first tested in the dark too. I wing surf hydrofoil and design my own hydrofoils. My latest project is a mould for a carbon fibre mast. I can tell you that there's not much point in sideways weight shift. If you aren't altering the stabiliser angle then do a long axis weight shift and widen your thrust differential fans and bring them back by the ends of the front foil. Normally the stabiliser compensates for high thrust from a wing. It therefore is adjusted for an upwards pitching moment. use differential on your relocated thrust motors and steer it like a bicycle, steer the foil to tip the board partly sideways in a camber angle and then remove the differential and control speed to hold the G-force in the corner.
Oh... and make a linear motor for your mass shift. End to end cylinder magnets in side a solenoid with a fast time of flight sensor reading distance for feedback. Depending on how your coding skills are. Not all the TOF sensors have good application library routines written for ESP32 or Arduino.
Even though it sounds strange a long range surfboard kind of makes sense. Low drag with solid buoyancy and just enough room to try all different forms of propulsion. Try slapping a solar panel on there and see how far we get. Alternatively a surfboard catamaran would give maximum area for solar panels.
As always Daniel, you never cease to amaze. I love your content, it’s always really cool. There’s only one problem that I find. I have no idea what language you are speaking (that’s code for I don’t understand the technical aspects of your builds).
🎉 CHALLENGE TIME 🎉 Do a hybrid vehicle capable of goin enough as deep as a lake 💧 , then capable of goin to the surface and rocket 🚀 up to space then land back on earth 🌏. Rules: You can use any vehicle, and use various vehicles in the challenge, but you can’t interfere with it (grab etc) only control it. Has to complete the following challenges: -get on the deepest part on a lake, grab a rock then propell up to the surface and go up to space, then land it back and keep it. Since all the videos of sending thinks to space have 10 million views in majority, it might be fun.
I think one of the reasons you were getting so much roll/yaw coupling because the two props you were using for yaw and forward thrust were tilted up. Whenever a motor applied yaw force it was providing part of it's force upwards, creating roll. Separating the yaw and forward thrust motors would allow you to angle your thrust motors up and your yaw motors forwards, removing their influence on roll.
shorting tail if you want pump foil cross water because tail being longer harder to pump to get moving and have seen some with small wing front and bigger wing on rear by pipe go up to board
Yes! I've been thinking about this. I thought the active weight shifting would be more effective for both elevation and turning. Which do you think would consume less power? propeller or active weight adjustment. A high aspect ratio foil will get you better efficiency but won't turn as well. Check out gong foils in france - long skinny or beta foils if you're rich.
From what I've seen of pump foiling you need to put a lot of force on the front of the board, almost like you're trying to make it nose dive. I think it's the pitching action that makes it work. It rotates around the center of lift and makes the tail flap in the water, producing thrust.
That is so neat!! Well done! Did you get funny looks from people passing by? I have an e foil board and i use it in places here in Australia where they simply have not seen one before!! Having a foil board that flys without someone on it must be a first too!!!
DREHMFLIGHT GANG
The legend himself! Good day, Nicholas!
Never heard of you until now... youtube's algorithm is really suffering due to all the wokeness that they're trying to build in....
Lol - I guess I have heard of you - I went to your page to find that I was already subscribed. ha
Silly to blame it on "wokeness", we don't need that sort of thing here, do we?
@@SolarWebsite what if it isn't silly?
Your proficiency in having ideas and being able to put in the effort to make them and document everything for UA-cam is admirable
I’m a 61 year old man who is known for being able to fix or fabricate anything. Unfortunately “everything” is currently limited to wood and metal working and mechanical things like cars, trucks, farm machinery etc. I am soooo impressed with your abilities with computers, 3D printers and pretty much everything you do in your videos. Seriously, I think people like you with your abilities, curiosity and thirst for knowledge are beyond impressive. You inspire me very much.
They are extremely difficult to ride. Especially if you don't already know how to surf/skate/wakeboard/etc.. One thing you seem to have mastered is safetly falling off. You often see surfers 'wipe out' and it looks totally random, but there is often some serious last second movements to aviod injury. Keep it up. Feels amazing once you get good.
Literally one of the best feelings in the world!
I am proficient at Wing foiling, and i feel sometimes already knowing how to surf or wakeboard can be a hindrance in initial progression (those sports relay a lot on back foot pressure). On the are there hand skiing and powder which Riley is an expert, can be a real help. I came from snowboarding to foiling and being able to be efficient on the pitch control on deeper conditions translate almost 1:1 to foiling.
Keep the good work @rctestflight this would be my favorite upload yet. Foiling rules
I longboard, but yeah, falling safely is definitely a skill, and a really important one at that
Isn't longboard on a road or grass maybe? Falling in the water is quite different I believe 🌈 @@maxleyba8350
@@maxleyba8350At least the ground is always there to catch you!
Road rash sucks lol
8:40 Fun fact: A group of raccoons is called a "gaze." Another name sometimes used is a "nursery."
@skenzyme81
Here, they are immigrants, at least until the dropbears get them.
@@Hamstr_Games 🤓
@@Hamstr_GamesCommunist learns a fun fact:
A better name would be syndicate
"Mega Mice"
I love the advanced flotation device on that FPV drone
What's funny is that you watch youtubers lose their cameras to the ocean every week, and here a genius solves the problem by waterproofing and strapping a plastic bottle to his cam and control equipment. Should make the rest of realize where we sit in the chain of intelligence really.
@@EdwardTilley I'm certainly on the bottom somewhere
@@OpreanMircea lol
Is there no end to your talent, I am always pleased to get a notification of a new video from you.
I can see this guy "disappearing" found 10 year later making the most advanced cartel smuggling vessels 😂😂
Hey Gary! I'm just as excited when I see another new video from him!
Do any of you know of any channels this good? Seriously. This is the only must watch channel for me.
to pump foil you need to see-saw your feet: every motion is front-foot-first.
Imagine each foot is in a different car of a rollercoaster, they're following the same path through the arc, but at different times.
or it's like skate boarding over a bump.
It looks like it behaves more like a bicycle. If you want to turn, yaw as you found out will cause an adverse roll the other way. However, to keep the board stable in the turn the stem needs to be leaned over such that the force remains directly down through the stem.
So... to turn left, yaw right, allow the board to "fall" in the direction of turn (left) and then steer (left) into it to stop the roll.
If you watch the boarders when doing a tight turn they are leaned over and to get out of the roll they kick the board to yaw it INTO the roll. Just like a "push steer" on a bike.
In motorcycling community, it's called "counter steering"
Yeah, I think if he had used the yaw/roll coupling to control roll then the first design would have probably been sufficient
This is exactly right
You're right, except it lacks any of the automatic correction you get from the front fork of a bike. That's what makes it so difficult to master, it's not helping you by self stabilizing.
@@chrisblake4198 Also lacks the gyroscopic effects on stability and control. It does gain the water surface/plain tension though.
I wonder if there was a way to implement the "trailing" effect of the front fork "rake angle". Would it be as simple as a smaller hydrofoil out in front like a rudder? Mounted in such a way that it will naturally migrate towards "understeer" such as the rake on a motorcycle or "easy rider" bicycle.
Something I only learnt recently, but professional race bikes have almost zero rake. I was a mountain bike guy and have ridden straight forked bikes, but never directly down forks. Some pro racing bikes have nearly vertical forks and only a small curve out at the bottom. They are known to be incredibly responsive, incredibly low drag but also incredible unstable. Not wise to ride them "no handed!"
Roll control could be achieved with a flywheel with axis of rotation parallel to the board. Just a motor so could control acceleration reasonably well and change inertia of flywheel thus amount of influence on the roll
I’ve worked with sensors and microcontrollers on my free time for a couple of years and it usually takes so much time for small benefit. I like how you just “I just add these and those sensor and now it works”. Kudos for mastering them without bragging
Gotta be one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. I can't wait to see the home-grown e foil board - I've been wanting to make my own
Try to attach a rudder and some ailerons to the foil and use waterproof servos and a flight controller to help stable the foil.
yeah this feels like tring to fly a plane by gluing more props to it instead of control surfaces
More drag would be created by underwater control surfaces. propulsion maybe, but for some reason I think axis control above water would be more efficient.
I realise you don’t want to cut into your expensive foil. But wouldn’t control surfaces under water give a more direct control? And could help you when standing on it.
This channel is the nerdiest and most fun, of nearly all of UA-cam.
You should consider heading up to Lake Ballinger. There is a local group of pump foilers that frequently ride at the boat ramp there. They have skills, knowledge and the best pump foil gear available. It's a great crew that I got to foil with while on vacation one day last summer.
yaw props behind center of mass will do roll in altered direction of front props. Maybe it will in during video i wrote it at 10:00 i mean rear props will push in front and do yaw in same way as front and roll will be compensated over all.
As an RC enthusiast and someone who rode an e-foil for the firs time last year, I am incredibly impressed by this video. Extremely fascinating. Keep it up!
This is similar to my senior design project in school. Look up "UF Unmanned Foil" on UA-cam, we added control surfaces to the tail wing and modeled it as a delta-wing in the controller. It was great to see your take on an unmanned hydrofoil! Always hoped I'd see someone try the active weight shifting method.
As a flight control engineer and wing foiler who has that same slingshot foil kit this was one of the most entertaining UA-cam videos I've ever seen!
A couple comments, that particular front wing has excellent lift but because of the low aspect ratio and wide span it's slow, and sluggish to turn. That's part of the reason why the roll control with the linear actuator didn't work well. With that wing you usually keep your stance offset to get more leverage over the wing to turn. If you tried a higher aspect wing it'd be twitchyer, you might have better luck with roll control. Another thing to keep in mind is the CG setup is a huge factor on performance. Everything should center around the center of lift on the front foil otherwise your going to have real difficulty turning smoothly.
Really amazing the engineering that went into this, awesome job. Also thank you for supporting open source and publishing your CAD files!
Thanks!
Amazing video. Really stoked to see what you do next with it.
That was very cool. The shots of the foil underwater were really neat. I like how you kept pushing and trying different things to get to this result. Looking forward to your summer board riding. 👍🏻
Good video. Enjoyed seeing the large raft of ducks on the water.
Cool lesson in center of gravity in relation to your thrust.
Looking forward to your future projects!
Awesome project! I was watching the roll control part and said outloud, move it back to the tail. I only know that from years of riding foils that the back foot controls the roll. Haha! It would be really cool to use that rig to test foils with. Then we could get much more controlled data on foil setups. Right now it's all about the way foils "feel" and very little standards to measure complete foil performance in the real world. How cool would it be to make a rc rig that would pump a foil! Imagine the data we could get from that! As always, thanks for the great content!
"The 1930 Robertson Waterplane ground-effect vehicle powered by an outboard motor". There are pictures and videos, but I don't think I can post a pic in the comments. I saw this the other day and immediately thought this might be something you'd build or at least be interested in knowing existed, if you don't already. In other news... it's getting to be grass cutting season. I hope you are working on your next autonomous mower contraption. I'm a long time subscriber to the channel and grateful for your willingness to share your talents with the world. Keep up the great work! - Stanford
Lake Union and Lake Washington?
I enjoyed your approach to the problems. Great work! It worked!
Amazing job! Foils are REALLY hard to balance. Even more so in open water with waves and wakes and such. Almost constant adjustments as the conditions change from flat to up the wave to down the wave, etc. Very challenging for us older guys. Kids take to it almost instantly, frustrating. Riding a foil board, pitch is controlled by weight shift forward and back. At the precise balance point where you aren't having to push down with either leg to balance you can go from riding on the water to flying with a slight shift of your hips and no other movement or speed/power applied. Pumping is the hardest for sure. You did well .
I applaud your ingenuity and out of the box approach to problem solving. I’m wondering whether due to the density of water, if rather than controlling the movement with propellers above the board, if real time micro adjustments to the underwater foil’s angle of attack, based on height above the water would be a more elegant and efficient way to control the movement. I’d be delighted to collaborate.
For inspiration you can look to foiling boats and catamarans. In terms of independence between speed and pitch/height you should probably be vectoring the thrust depending on how high the board is using a rotating engine mount. This would increase efficiency. In terms of making it work for a human though, adding engines onto the foil instead of props in the air would be the superior method. Ideally the batteries should be a part of the board i think. Though cooling would probably become a problem as the board in flight doesn't contact the water. The ESCs would probably be cooled the easiest if they were on the foil somehow. With you on top of it you dont need to think about controls at all. You changing your center of mass would be controlling the board. Also tweaking the distance between the foils, their location relative to the center of the board and their size has a large impact on how the board behaves. This is something you didn't include in the video, and that probably could have made your pitch problems easier to solve. Also depending on how big, heavy and fast your human carrying board ends up being, you might want to look at foil designs for kitefoiling or windfoiling as the speeds there are higher and in windsurfing the weight is way higher as well. Oh and get yourself a impact vest. It makes a world of difference when falling at high speeds. Though they aren't as good floatation devices in my experience.
This is a great project. What’s funny is that by the time it was stable, you basically made a drone that probably could have flown without the hydrofoil! I’ve been learning to wake foil in boat wake, and these foils are definitely not stable. The yaw/roll coupling is very weird. Makes me wonder why no one has made a foil with dihedral in the wing?
You should add ailerons to the bottom part. Maybe even a rudder.
This guy is so bad ass. I have a CNC machine now and a bunch of 3D printers and tools. Learned Alibre and Plasticity and have been getting good with precision parts. Still a long way to go but this dude is my inspiration. Keep it up!
7:20 you can clearly see what the issue is: Momentum is having more effect here than the weight shift.
If you want to make roll-control with weight, you better use a reaction control via a spinning mass.
100% same exact thought! Actually two reaction wheels. (roll, pitch)
Think the sifting weight was also a bit too far forward. Should've been between main wing, and the mask. (near, but above the centre of mass when foiling)
He's getting unintended roll because the two props he's using for forward and Yaw are tilted up so much. Whenever he applies yaw, part of the yawing force is applied upward, producing roll.
@@theflyingfish66 yeah but that's not what's happening here. The movement of the mass is accelerating instead of decelerating the roll and thus tilt, because the shift has more authority than the weight shift in this short timeframe.
So the "fix" for the now accelerated tilt is accelerating it more by shifting faster, which ultimately let's the mass hit end of travel. But at this time the tilt is already unrecoverable.
You're a genius happy to watch your endeavors. I find your videos are the only ones I can watch all the way through and not bounce. So much crap out there. Rc-er here just been out because of health and monetary issues associated with that. Keep it up!
lmao. at 0:43 i know that location. been repairing the AV system on a boat literally right at the end of the dock for the last few months
Your airfoil has no dihedral. Therefore, no lateral stability with a very high center of gravity. Why not make a foil on your 3 d printer and put in a few degrees of dihedral and see the effects.
Or change the current airfoil with higher lift on the ends to see if that improves your stablity.
Love the videos, Keep them coming.
5 thrusters for 4 dof.. from under to over actuated - a water thruster will remove pitch coupling- and if fully above the foil-plane will eliminate steady state ventilation of the foil (dynamic hopping will still be a thing).
I absolutely cannot do electrical engineering, or wiring for that matter, but I thoroughly enjoy seeing the outcome of someone that uses their knowledge. I ended up being a carpenter because it was what I enjoyed problem solving, and I can see that here. Bravo!
P.S. I fell in love with carpentry in Snoqualmie. I learned my love of the craft on the very lakefronts you test on. It was 2007-ish, so long ago.....
Control surfaces on the back of the main spar? Like an upper and a lower rudder for better control of which way it wants to twist during maneuvers?
Cool stuff!
Super interesting video! However, I am wondering why you added all these propellers above the water level, instead of just using some actuators beneath the water on the hydrofoil itself. Seems like it would be way simpler and give you more control. Would also get rid of all these dangerous spinning blades...
Great video and project. It was impressive to see you riding one and controlling the other, talk about multitasking. So many of your projects inspire me but I don't have your natural abilities, so I watch.
Long time Kite / wing / surf foiler here, from my experience I think you should try using more counter steering with the props in the front. It should have been possible to get it working with just the weight shifter over the center of gravity and 3 props at the front for differential steering and speed+ height control. The sideways props to help the weight shifter are a genius hotfix but shouldn't be necessary.
When you initiate a turn, you can do it by the roll axis, i.e the weight shifter, and by rudder; the differntial motors. But like a bicycle, if you want to initiate a left turn, you (mostly subconsciously) turn the handlebars slightly to the right for a short moment, which makes the bike ride to the right under your body, which makes it easier to "fall" into the left leaning for the left turn. There are nice videos about counter steering with bicycles, showing that you need the ability to steer right to initiate a left turn.
Like "The counter intuitive physics of turning a bike" by minute physics.
Same goes here with the foil board, and its the same for initiating a turn or getting out of a turn. If the board is leaning to the left alot and you want to get it back to level, you should steer right with the weight shifter, but left with the rudder; the differential steering with the props. In the video it looks like you tried getting the board level again by both steering the weight and the differential thrust to the same direction, or at least kept the heading straight while steering max with the weight shifter, which didn't help and didn't worked.
Please try it out, as it is something you can try without rebuilding, just tempering with the steering programming, or try it manually. Would be interesting to see if this is enough to stop using the sideway props to help the weight shifter. They just look like unnecessary overkill to me, lol.
Ah, yeah, in your demonstration at 5:21 you clearly showed mapping left weight shift together with the right prop turning on; which is basically rudder left. So you basically try to steer it like a car and force the balance, when you should use counter steering to balance and steer it like a bike.
one person. bags of talent. great attitude. rc skillz.
By far my favourite uploader! Well done mate! I always love seeing how you troubleshoot and then overcome said problem with real outside the box thinking. Great job 👏👏👏👍👍
Man... this is one of my most favorite projects. I enjoy all of them, but this one is something special. Keep up the great work.
Having tried a e-foilboard for the first time this year, and as a lover of all things R/C this is a 10/10 video! Bravo!
Another triumph! So amazing, I'm so happy you are able to share these videos.❤
Loved all the Seattle shots, and your ad in the Arb! I Ran a LOT of miles on those paths, good memories!
Like some other commenters have pointed out, a foil board has roll control via countersteer. However, my understanding of the dynamics of foil boarding suggest a unicycle a closer analog than a bicycle. Probably even closer would be a foiling windsurfer because of your aerodynamic roll control. You successfully created a vehicle with a very unique set of lift/thrust/stability interactions. Your projects are so interesting and admirable!!
from my experience (attempting) to ride foils yaw is controlled by they inverse yaw couple, if you want to roll right you yaw left (just like a bicycle) then once you are at the correct roll angle for your trun you can hold it and execute the turn (again just like a bicycle). you really don't have separate yaw and roll control as a rider
Great project, great video! Your persistence is inspiring 😀
I watched your videos and recently moved to Washington State Seattle, immediately recognized nature and realized that now I can one day see your inventions on the water or in the sky
8:44 not a heard but a “gaze of raccoons” is correct 🎉 15:27 I see fire too😢
Brilliant!! As a foiler I appreciate the effort put into learning to fly. Come up with a jet propulsion system that is affordable like foil drive and look out !
Social media definitely makes that stuff look easy. I mean I can ride almost any board with ease but that’s from like a decade and a half of riding them lol. Pure muscle memory at this point. 100% bust my ass all the time, but now with the added adult fear of dying! Social media is just the highlights.
Love the brave bottle quad! Used to fly over water and have to hunt for info on waterproofing and safety with my FPV quads. As shown you can get some neat footage if you’re prepared to dive and man had no fear immediate send!
YESSSS
Daniel is literally doing all the things I’ve been suggesting over the last year and I’m HERE FOR IT
I wonder how well it would work if you added control surfaces to the hydrofoil and used those to solely control the craft.
Well done you!! ❤ I wager you could rig control surfaces on the foils themselves. E-foiling - wing foiling. wind foiling - kite foiling, will all become accessible to millions. You are a hero.
In 2024 a novice engineer can single handedly design and build a perfect stabilized underwater plan. The Wright brothers would shed a tear of joy for how far engineering principles have come. This is a perfect example of it.
Very cool! I like how much the foil resembles a DLG.
Very cool, you could also build the equivalent to controllable ailerons and rudder to the foil itself leaving the board clean and ridable. You would need a drone type controller to aim for level etc.
You are so far above what I’ll ever do, but I love watching it! UA-cam is good for that! I still love your homemade planes from years ago.
I never told you this ---- BUT, You are Amazing !!!! I love watching your videos, Your thought process is so far ahead of the average person its awesome to watch you think (way) outside the Box....
13:05 dang, wish I knew about the secret Drown floatation bottle when i crashed mine into a river. thats genius.
I know water barely hurts its after a drone was left outside for 4 months, and/or crashed into snow a bunch. (just dry it a bit and it works)
Board is good for pumpfoil, in the shots you got the balance and start right but you didn't generate enough front foot pressure. Just in case you wanna try this again. Thanks for sharing this very interesting project.
0:52 drones don't need gyros to fly. Tons of FPV/Racing pilots turn off all the sensors(gyro/accel/imu) and the drone is flown with raw human-to-motor input. If you want it to self level,,,yes it will need sensors
This is so wrong
Pat pend prop inverted graph because flat edge at high speed is a wall and just drag. There are diff needs/ behavior at diff speeds. Low needs small angle of attack, high needs large.
I have some ideas. Add ailerons to the hydrofoil wing. Add an elevator and rudder to the tail. Add a thruster to the mast just above the wing. It will be more efficient to have the trust and control surfaces under water. Then put a waterproof control box in or on the board to protect the electronics.
When foiling I keep the foil and mast underneath me using short-term horizontal rotations. I think of it more like an inverted pendulum problem. Making turns left or right (I mean planning the path I want to take) is done by counter-steering a little bit and letting the lift push you around. (A lot like riding a bicycle!) I think this is the same effect that you observed before implementing the weight shift control mode. It would be neat to see this control model investigated.
Thats such a cool idea, you should write that in the title
Dude, you keep saying, joke, but that thing is awesome! You know your stuff about tuning stuff. Impressive.
Love Ya Man!!! Awesome Video! Awesome quality production!!! Awesome Team!
My favorite of all your videos. 🎉 The high quality camera work is always stunning.
FWIW yaw -> opposite roll coupling in the context of a balancing craft = counter steering. It's how bicycles and motorcycles really almost anything that actually "balances" works. If you want to initiate a left turn you will need a lean (roll) to the left that is appropriate to the speed/turn radius. To initiate that left lean, you first drive the balancing point out to the right. On a bicycle/motorcycle you counter steer right (thus an actual small right yaw as viewed from above), to initiate a left turn, then turn back left only to match the turn radius/lean angle. Your weight shift mechanism was less effective for the same reason it is when you try to ride without hands on a bike, cept the foil doesn't have the self righting ability of a bicycle (provided by rake/trail and a little bit of gyroscopic precession which actually countersteers to stay upright) so it eventually just it just falls over. Instead of a weight shift, it might be interesting to use a reaction wheel mounted horizontally, so you can actually take advantage of the yaw -> opposite roll coupling. I suspect this is really what folks are doing when they ride a foil aggressively. Twisting one way to initiate a turn the opposite way.
This video reminds me of so many of my own experiments, a proportion of which got first tested in the dark too. I wing surf hydrofoil and design my own hydrofoils. My latest project is a mould for a carbon fibre mast. I can tell you that there's not much point in sideways weight shift. If you aren't altering the stabiliser angle then do a long axis weight shift and widen your thrust differential fans and bring them back by the ends of the front foil. Normally the stabiliser compensates for high thrust from a wing. It therefore is adjusted for an upwards pitching moment. use differential on your relocated thrust motors and steer it like a bicycle, steer the foil to tip the board partly sideways in a camber angle and then remove the differential and control speed to hold the G-force in the corner.
Oh... and make a linear motor for your mass shift. End to end cylinder magnets in side a solenoid with a fast time of flight sensor reading distance for feedback. Depending on how your coding skills are. Not all the TOF sensors have good application library routines written for ESP32 or Arduino.
Even though it sounds strange a long range surfboard kind of makes sense. Low drag with solid buoyancy and just enough room to try all different forms of propulsion. Try slapping a solar panel on there and see how far we get. Alternatively a surfboard catamaran would give maximum area for solar panels.
As always Daniel, you never cease to amaze. I love your content, it’s always really cool. There’s only one problem that I find. I have no idea what language you are speaking (that’s code for I don’t understand the technical aspects of your builds).
🎉 CHALLENGE TIME 🎉
Do a hybrid vehicle capable of goin enough as deep as a lake 💧 , then capable of goin to the surface and rocket 🚀 up to space then land back on earth 🌏.
Rules:
You can use any vehicle, and use various vehicles in the challenge, but you can’t interfere with it (grab etc) only control it.
Has to complete the following challenges:
-get on the deepest part on a lake, grab a rock then propell up to the surface and go up to space, then land it back and keep it.
Since all the videos of sending thinks to space have 10 million views in majority, it might be fun.
combine brilliance and enthusiasm and you get this channel!
Thats super cool.
As someone who does a lot of foiling, it's cool to see how someone would go about controlling one electronically.
Great!
But why no dihedral or pitch offset on the foils to give inherent stability in pitch and roll, like for aircraft?
Next Project: Surfboard that uses ground effect or a flying surfboard
Genious Daniel! Your brain is admirable! Keep posting please!
I love the weight shift. Wild like to see that on ground vehicles like a crawler.
Waypoint mission next? Waypoint efficiency mission, to test how efficient the foil is compared to no foil?
Very satisfying video! You've got a great work ethic on top of everything else.
There are so good - always enjoy your content dude! Please keep creating more!
As it is like an airplane, why you don't just control under de water using plans, even if you are using morors out the water
Dude you are so much fun. The perfect bridge between the divergent and the almost-divergent.
Great video!
I've been thinking of this for a while!! Awesome to see it fly!!!!!!!!!! Ardu the World!!
I think one of the reasons you were getting so much roll/yaw coupling because the two props you were using for yaw and forward thrust were tilted up. Whenever a motor applied yaw force it was providing part of it's force upwards, creating roll. Separating the yaw and forward thrust motors would allow you to angle your thrust motors up and your yaw motors forwards, removing their influence on roll.
shorting tail if you want pump foil cross water because tail being longer harder to pump to get moving and have seen some with small wing front and bigger wing on rear by pipe go up to board
Yes! I've been thinking about this. I thought the active weight shifting would be more effective for both elevation and turning. Which do you think would consume less power? propeller or active weight adjustment. A high aspect ratio foil will get you better efficiency but won't turn as well. Check out gong foils in france - long skinny or beta foils if you're rich.
Great project and video! I could have sworn you were going to use the weight shift for pitch control. Can’t wait to see what’s next!
From what I've seen of pump foiling you need to put a lot of force on the front of the board, almost like you're trying to make it nose dive.
I think it's the pitching action that makes it work. It rotates around the center of lift and makes the tail flap in the water, producing thrust.
That is so neat!! Well done! Did you get funny looks from people passing by? I have an e foil board and i use it in places here in Australia where they simply have not seen one before!! Having a foil board that flys without someone on it must be a first too!!!
Ideas into action- new transportation from this well done