choosing the most stable platform for FPV and AVP camera controled flight

[kuzeydogun]

choosing the most stable platform for AVP(aerial video/photography) and FPV(first person view), live-cam tracking, real-time camera control?

Dear Friends
I am a chief police officer from turkey. We are starting a new project soon, in our town(adana, south of turkey ) for tourist safety. The name of the project is "helipolis". We will try to preapare a rc heli team for hovering throught the city. Our helis will hang out at the city and will look for troublemakers. The system we plan has transmitters placed along the city(up to 10 mile diameter area) and our electronic guys got their a/v transmitting/receiving system to work with.
Now we are at the state of finding the most suitable platform to work with. Our platform should carry a simple gps tracking module to get the coordinates, a nose cam for camera control as first person view, this nose cam is for livecam flight control. And a second moving cam for watching the city. The platform should hover at about 200m height, with a speed of 100km/h and with about 2 hours of flight time. The platform should also be easy to fly, very stable and predictable and strong across the wind. We do not need any 3d flight abilities but we need a clear flight, or we do not need lots of lbsss lifting capacity. I guess 2 or 3kg of lifting capacity is enough for extra modules. Keep in mind that the ship will be controlled at out of eye-contact range

Now dear RC friends, please give these old tech-poor police officers an idea for choosing the most suitable heli platform....we just cant find the right heliship??

A gasser helicopter, or a bergen gasser, maxum, an UAVP, a Mikrokopter, quadrocopter or any other heli brand or type????? give us a hand professionals please

Thanks for any replies guys and sorry for the poor english, tried to write my best, hope you understand....

Best wishes

Adana police Department of Turkey
Adana/TURKEY
msn: kuzeydogun@hotmail.com

[kuzeydogun]

any ideas rc/world???Dont you think a bergen, condor, maxum or similar ship can answer our needs especially about stability??

[bullaculla]

2 hours? at 60mi/h? are you serious? your best bet is to contact Chris Bergen and see if you can get an observer with a high volume fuel tank. I dont think they can move that fast tho...

[crewchief]

You will need to find a platform that already comes as close as possible to meeting your requirements, because you probably will not have the systems engineering expertise in your department to accomplish the autonomous flight requirements and other enhancements that you require. Therefore you need to buy something that already does most of what you need. There are some requirements like speed and endurance that you might need to sacrifice in order to retain other more valuable features.

In my opinion, you cannot fly a large helicopter capable of doing serious bodily harm over a populated area for extended periods of time. If you're lucky the public will demand you stop, and if you're not lucky you will have a serious incident. The Los Angeles Police Department flew a fixed-wing UAV on a mission similar to yours and it crashed, causing an uproar.

Look to other law enforcement agencies who have done exactly what you want to do. We are never the first to solve a problem. See what kinds of solutions they have come up with in Europe. The most popular approach is the MicroDrone, which is the most advanced surveillance aircraft commercially available right now.

http://www.microdrones.com/

There is a city in England, Liverpool I think, that has a MicroDrone patrolling for hooligan activity. I'm sure they would be happy to give you guidance. As we all know, England is the leader in video surveillance.

And finally, in my opinion pilot skill is 95% of success. You will need to have extremely proficient pilots, and remember that in intense situations such as police actions, their skills will diminish by 25% or more due to stress. Their extensive training and good habits will end up saving your reputation over the long run.

Good luck on your project!

[LoopBaCK]

When I forst read this I was thinking this might be better suited for fixed wing platforms and specifically remembered a company called Octatron which I think is making the UAV's for Los Angelas (or at least LA is evaluating them). Here is the link: http://www.octatron.com/prodSkySeer.html.

Back to heli's - Have you looked at Neural Robotics - http://www.neural-robotics.com ? I think they have a working product very close to your specs. especially with all the autonomy. Lastly Bergen would be a great company to contact. They make heli's that are large and have long duration capabilities.

[kuzeydogun]

i ve read your advices friends and also did more googling. I think i gave a wrong expression in my first post about my needs.

i mean i do not need anything autonomous, i dont want it to go and complete a mission itself. Actually the project is around the point advertisebility more than effectivity. So something not too big(like a bergen, maxum, condor etc) controlled by our pilots with a live-cam at out of eye-contact range and at least 45min takeoff time will be suitable. Also the specs for speed and altitude are not strictly fixed and can be changed.

It should be easy to fly, easy to control, stable, predictable and wind proof so our pilots can flow smoothly without hitting to a wall or tree. It should be something like like a cabriolet car that you take your kids and have some sightseeing through the city in a hot summer day...

So we guess one of the mid-huge commercial gassers like bergen, condor or maxum will be enough, but which one is more like a cabriole to hang around with???

[apeman88]

Might consider the professional UAV.. the Yamaha RMAX. It has GPS, camera and all the options you are looking for. But it ain't cheap.

http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/product/sky/history/rmax-iig/index.html

[kingraptor]

kuzeydogun:


Brian at ViperDraggs Racing has done lots of different set-ups; he even did a helicopter for a major motion picture, so he could probably come up with something.

I think he is on this forum under ViperDrags66221, the last part is his zip code since he lives in Kansas.

Anyway, some of the answers on this topic have some good suggestions I was just giving you another!!:wink:


Jack

[trackhead]

i mean i do not need anything autonomous,

It should be easy to fly, easy to control, stable, predictable and wind proof so our pilots can flow smoothly without hitting to a wall or tree.

Easy to fly: no
Easy to control: no
Wind Proof: no

What you're asking will take years and years to develop the skills to fly, maintain, and develop. Even then, you will find it frustratingly difficult, expensive, and likely ineffective in many ways.

If you're lucky, you won't kill anyone in the process.