23
Jun 12

On the importance of knowing left from right

Had my first official test run with all electronics/autopilot in place. Sailing went well, got some nice video, but auto-pilot failed. The good news is that the problem was very simple... my autopilot had left and right confused!! The result was it would navigate in the opposite direction of the current waypoint.

I realized pretty quickly that the servo was responding in reverse, but I couldn't understand why it would cause this behavior. I expected it to just take the 'long way around' to point towards the next waypoint. The trouble is, the boat constantly tries to compute the shortest angle to the next waypoint.. since I had it flipped, everytime it crossed 180 degrees away from the waypoint, it would tell itself to go the other direction (hence always stuck 180 degrees off). I was able to reproduce/confirm this in the simulator as well.

Video of 'issue':
Left vs. Right

Serenity Cam (stills and video.. back cam needs to be adjusted slightly)
Serenity Cam

With the correction now in place, another test is in order (hopefully tomorrow!) 😀

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