Drone Motors on a Hydrofoil Surfboard 

DREHMFLIGHT GANG

Your proficiency in having ideas and being able to put in the effort to make them and document everything for RU-vid is admirable

8:40 Fun fact: A group of raccoons is called a "gaze." Another name sometimes used is a "nursery."

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 love the advanced flotation device on that FPV drone

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.

Is there no end to your talent, I am always pleased to get a notification of a new video from you.

This channel is the nerdiest and most fun, of nearly all of RU-vid.

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. 👍🏻

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.

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 👏👏👏👍👍

Another triumph! So amazing, I'm so happy you are able to share these videos.❤

Try to attach a rudder and some ailerons to the foil and use waterproof servos and a flight controller to help stable the foil.

Amazing video. Really stoked to see what you do next with it.

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!

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!

Great project, great video! Your persistence is inspiring 😀

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.

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.

one person. bags of talent. great attitude. rc skillz.

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

My favorite of all your videos. 🎉 The high quality camera work is always stunning.

Cool lesson in center of gravity in relation to your thrust. Looking forward to your future projects!

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.

Loved all the Seattle shots, and your ad in the Arb! I Ran a LOT of miles on those paths, good memories!

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!

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.

There are so good - always enjoy your content dude! Please keep creating more!

You guys are just geniuses🏆 I love nearly all your content and it is very cool interesting and exciting to follow all your amazing projects! Thanks 🙏🏻

Very satisfying video! You've got a great work ethic on top of everything else.

Very cool! I like how much the foil resembles a DLG.

Genious Daniel! Your brain is admirable! Keep posting please!

You are really a great engineer 👍🏼 love your content

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

Always fun to watch your experiments --- this one was great...

This is similar to my senior design project in school. Look up "UF Unmanned Foil" on RU-vid, 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.

Ideas into action- new transportation from this well done

Love Ya Man!!! Awesome Video! Awesome quality production!!! Awesome Team!

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!

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!

Dude you are so much fun. The perfect bridge between the divergent and the almost-divergent.

combine brilliance and enthusiasm and you get this channel!

Thank you! This is just what I needed today.

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.

You are so far above what I’ll ever do, but I love watching it! RU-vid is good for that! I still love your homemade planes from years ago.

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 !

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!

Loved this! The FPV hobby has its own mad scientist 🧑‍🔬

One of your best contraptions. 👍👍

Real good fun. Grit determination positive outcome. Thanks rc.

You did a lot of good work to get to a working prototype. One thing to consider, foils are designed with anhedral to make the setup maneuverable. A foil with dihedral would increase stability.

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....

"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

Really clever solutions! I'm amazed the level of effort you put into your projects. In this case though, I think perhaps you should to change your design paradigm. Maybe try a gyroscope.

Nice work! I always enjoy your videos. 😎

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!

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.

Thats super cool. As someone who does a lot of foiling, it's cool to see how someone would go about controlling one electronically.

So happy to see bigger channels getting into this! Efoiling/hydrofoil pumping is so fun.

YESSSS Daniel is literally doing all the things I’ve been suggesting over the last year and I’m HERE FOR IT

Ah, can't wait for more RC adventures as the weather warms up.

Love this channel... You never know what's next.

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!!

What a great project. 👍 Try a high aspect ratio wing for pump foiling 😃

i love seeing your projects. so cool.

Excellent video as always!

Excellent work!!!

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.....

I love your work and this is my favorite episode.

This is the best video you've done in a long time absolutely outstanding👍👍👍👍👍

Totally tubular. Love it 😀

That thing is so cool. Hydrofoils are just great.

When you were riding one board and controlling the other board it reminded me of the mini-game in Fusion Frenzy where the players control their character with one thumbstick and a little bomb with the other thumb stick. You try to run your bomb into other characters while avoiding their bombs. It's freaking hard.

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.

I've been thinking of this for a while!! Awesome to see it fly!!!!!!!!!! Ardu the World!!

Another awesome project. My first thought on the roll control was a reaction wheel. Wonder if it would have enough torque to keep it stable

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).

It's crazy how smooth it flys, would be intresting to see if a scaled up version of this could survive larger waves. if so, I could see it being used for filming

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!

Every one of your videos is crazy and awesome!!

Hi Daniel, really impressed you managed to get the hydrofoil flying. Have you looked into the topic of control theory? It is filled with insights on stabilisation of dynamical systems, and will help you choose effective actuators and control laws. For example, the sliding battery balancer appears to exhibit non minimum phase behaviour.

man you keep coming up with great idea's.

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!!!

rcfleshlight I'm always so hyped when you upload! great video

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.

Very impressive Daniel. Who know all those years ago when I was watching you drop melons out of a janky looking foam cargo plane we'd be here today. Great work!

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.

Would love to see more of the controlling through weight distribution. Also using control surfaces on the foil(s) might be interesting.

Lake Union and Lake Washington? I enjoyed your approach to the problems. Great work! It worked!

This thing reminds me so much of the Nebuchadnezzar from the Matrix. But for real though... There is something soo majestic about seeing that glider "fly" just beneath the surface!

hey, the second you said something about the drone i had the same idea. BUT! dont use it for self stability. I was thinking about trying to stabilize the thing through heavy duty trim servos with you on it!!

You could potentially make one of these with some sort of internal gyroscope weight similar to “seakeepers” in larger vessels and potentially lower the skill requirements and make these accessible to many people

I love this channel so much, so interesting

well done. good engineering 👍

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.

Awesome project. Could you use some sort of anhedral or dihedral foil on the bottom to help keep it level? Just wondering if that could work.

Always a pleasure 💪🏻

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.

A few sessions is not enough to learn pump foiling from a dock, trust me :D Sick build! looks like a super cool project!

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).