6 ms·

According to videos published they still seem to be flying drones manually, so won't additional latency introduced by the cellular network & repeaters make this

According to videos published they still seem to be flying drones manually, so won't additional latency introduced by the cellular network & repeaters make this really hard / impossible?

tonyarkles 1y ago
I don’t have a link handy but one of the videos I saw on Twitter looked like there was pretty bad latency. Once they got to the target aircraft they went into a hover and very slowly set it down on the wing before the FPV feed froze. Edit: https://x.com/jimmysecuk/status/1929164382061092952 https://x.com/jimmysecuk/status/1929164382061092952
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  they were using ardupilot, so the control they gave is "move to this point then descend", latency does not matter much as long as it's reasonable.
  - tonyarkles 1y ago
    In most of the videos I've seen there are failsafe warnings on the screen indicating a loss of GPS, which I'm not surprised at all about. Russia's well-known for having GPS jammers, and having them on-site at an airforce base when the enemy they've been fighting is using drones is just common sense. The video I linked to really looks to me like it's being stick flown with IMU stabilization but probably without Pos Hold.
- mmooss 1y ago
  Why land slowly if the plan is to blow up the drone?
  - hagbard_c 1y ago
    Because you want it to explode at the right location, not get blown off course by a gust of wind or bounce off the wing and explode in the air.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      Exploding on impact seems like a very mature, well-established technology.
      - hollerith 1y ago
        Exploding on impact is a mature tech for things like shells, but it requires building a mechanism into the shell so that it won't explode before it is fired. If the drone will be controlled by a human operator till the end, then it might win for the drone design to avoid the complexity of a sensor to detect impacts and of the aforementioned mechanism. Also, landing on an airplane wing is easier to train for and to test than a mission plan that involves a drone that explodes on impact.
        hagbard_c 1y ago
        > Also, landing on an airplane wing is easier to train for and to test than a mission plan that involves a drone that explodes on impact. ...and more importantly it is also easier to automate, i.e. autoland on wing spar, detonate, mission complete.
Teever 1y ago
Have you checked the latency on modern cell networks lately? I had a friend who was gaming on his phone that was tethered to his desktop about a decade ago and after he disabled some power saving stuff in the settings on android he was getting a reasonable 100ms ping that had negligible jitter.

According to videos published they still seem to be flying drones manually, so won't additional latency introduced by the cellular network & repeaters make this really hard / impossible?

tonyarkles 1y ago

I don’t have a link handy but one of the videos I saw on Twitter looked like there was pretty bad latency. Once they got to the target aircraft they went into a hover and very slowly set it down on the wing before the FPV feed froze. Edit: https://x.com/jimmysecuk/status/1929164382061092952 https://x.com/jimmysecuk/status/1929164382061092952

mrheosuper 1y ago
they were using ardupilot, so the control they gave is "move to this point then descend", latency does not matter much as long as it's reasonable.
- tonyarkles 1y ago
  In most of the videos I've seen there are failsafe warnings on the screen indicating a loss of GPS, which I'm not surprised at all about. Russia's well-known for having GPS jammers, and having them on-site at an airforce base when the enemy they've been fighting is using drones is just common sense. The video I linked to really looks to me like it's being stick flown with IMU stabilization but probably without Pos Hold.
mmooss 1y ago
Why land slowly if the plan is to blow up the drone?
- hagbard_c 1y ago
  Because you want it to explode at the right location, not get blown off course by a gust of wind or bounce off the wing and explode in the air.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Exploding on impact seems like a very mature, well-established technology.
    - hollerith 1y ago
      Exploding on impact is a mature tech for things like shells, but it requires building a mechanism into the shell so that it won't explode before it is fired. If the drone will be controlled by a human operator till the end, then it might win for the drone design to avoid the complexity of a sensor to detect impacts and of the aforementioned mechanism. Also, landing on an airplane wing is easier to train for and to test than a mission plan that involves a drone that explodes on impact.
      - hagbard_c 1y ago
        > Also, landing on an airplane wing is easier to train for and to test than a mission plan that involves a drone that explodes on impact. ...and more importantly it is also easier to automate, i.e. autoland on wing spar, detonate, mission complete.

Teever 1y ago

Have you checked the latency on modern cell networks lately? I had a friend who was gaming on his phone that was tethered to his desktop about a decade ago and after he disabled some power saving stuff in the settings on android he was getting a reasonable 100ms ping that had negligible jitter.