Welcome, Commercial Drone Pilots!
Join our growing community today!
Sign up

What is a HELIX

Kaifect

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2018
Messages
50
Reaction score
7
Age
62
Location
Illinois
Website
www.kaifect.com
I have a client that asked for this video. Of course I said sure, but now I need to figure out what it means.

"When you do a bridge video i was thinking what would be cool is if you do a straight fly over of the bridge and then go backwards doing a helix looping around the bridge so you can see above and below the bridge"

Could someone explain what is is and ( I know its a long shot) post a link to a video, or some tips on completing it. I keep picturing a drone in the river on this project.

Thanks.
 
I guess the idea is flying a helical trajectory backwards with the bridge on the helix axis. The flight path would look something like this:

Image15.gif

It would be very challenging to program, let alone execute.
 
I presented this video to the local FAA Safety Officer, several months ago, they were upset and noted he violated a number of rules.
I wouldn't be surprised this was forward to Washington. Sorry guys, I didn't find this video amusing.

I didn't post it to amuse you. I posted it to illustrate that helical flight paths are possible.
 
I have a client that asked for this video. Of course I said sure, but now I need to figure out what it means.

"When you do a bridge video i was thinking what would be cool is if you do a straight fly over of the bridge and then go backwards doing a helix looping around the bridge so you can see above and below the bridge"

Could someone explain what is is and ( I know its a long shot) post a link to a video, or some tips on completing it. I keep picturing a drone in the river on this project.

Thanks.
I just can't fully wrap my mind around a true pull back helix flight. I'm sure it can be done but it would be VERY difficult to be done smoothly and accurately.

I'd ask them for more details about exactly what they are looking to have you do. Maybe provide an example/link or something to one they've seen.

I'm sure it can be done though.

I've watched that video probably over 2 dozen times. That guy has some major flying skills even though he did bust a couple of CBO guidelines and actually "trespassing" 1x in there LOL.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sar104
Thanks for all the input. The diagram was extremely helpful. I am definitely going to try a maneuver like that but not around a bridge, or over water. I will send the client another type video that will show off all of the bridge.
I found that video interesting in some areas, and nauseating in others. Going through some of the obstacles was fun to watch and would be fine to try with someone else's drone.
I'm not a big rules guy but flying that close to a train makes us all look bad.
Thanks again for the help, you guys are great.
 
Thanks for all the input. The diagram was extremely helpful. I am definitely going to try a maneuver like that but not around a bridge, or over water. I will send the client another type video that will show off all of the bridge.
I found that video interesting in some areas, and nauseating in others. Going through some of the obstacles was fun to watch and would be fine to try with someone else's drone.
I'm not a big rules guy but flying that close to a train makes us all look bad.
Thanks again for the help, you guys are great.

In theory you could create a Litchi mission that describes such a flight path since the equation describing a helix is quite simple and then all one would have to do is transform it into lat/long/altitude with the bridge centerline as the axis. That's the easy part though - the important question would be whether it would need very dense waypoints or whether it would execute curved turns in the vertical, as well as horizontal plane.
 
I used Litchi but I wouldn't even know where to start making something like that. Where can I learn to do that?

I doubt that it's ever been done since it's not really what Litchi was designed for, but the concept involves fairly straightforward mathematics. I'd be willing to try it to see if it works (without a bridge in the way to begin with). For added realism, how big is the bridge? What I'm really interested in is what would be the approximate radius and pitch of the helix?
 
  • Like
Reactions: BigAl07
Just guessing the bridge is two lanes wide and about 150 feet across the river. At normal water level the bridge bottom is about 20 feet from surface of the water.
 
Just guessing the bridge is two lanes wide and about 150 feet across the river. At normal water level the bridge bottom is about 20 feet from surface of the water.

That's pretty tight. So a helix maybe 60 ft in diameter, 150 ft long, 50 ft pitch (3 turns) and with the lower extent only a couple of meters from the water?
 
Just as an illustration, this is a Litchi mission flying a helix over water of about the right dimensions constructed from 100 waypoints. I haven't defined any actions other than the flight path itself.

Mission Hub - Litchi

It's not easy to visualize in the Mission Hub - this is what it looks like in Google Earth:

screenshot93.jpg

The question is how smoothly will it fly the route and will adding curved turns help.

Attached is a 3D kml description of the path that will open in Google Earth and allow you to see the helix from various angles, but you will need to delete the .txt extension that I added to allow it to upload.
 

Attachments

  • helix_03.kml.txt
    28.2 KB · Views: 7
  • Like
Reactions: BigAl07

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
4,277
Messages
37,605
Members
5,969
Latest member
KC5JIM