Thoughts on Advanced Applications for RCS

This is a new concept of the Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) or Remotely Piloted Vehicle (RPV) control applied to scale model boats. RCS is intended to provide realistic scaled control rather than real time instant response. That is why the term conning system is used. However, the concept can be utilized in any type of remote vehicle control when the human response time is not critical (fast). In this affordable system the display and use of the feedback will be generally too slow to be of use or value in any high speed real time application.

Reasonable application of  ROV control has been accomplished for explorer rovers both on land and under water and long range RPV aircraft of many types. The process is also well established in space and other distant world exploration but response is limited by radio signal delays. Low speed ROV's are used to fulfill missions in the scientific, military, or hazardous investigation areas. All these applications are well established using the RCS type of feedback and are part of the inspiration for use of RCS in slow speed scale model boats.

Currently using RCS in the real time (speed and directional) control in standard R/C small field type model aircraft and all forms of high speed R/C model competition vehicles is not realistic. Scale slow operation is not desired. Data gathering and recording for later historical retrieval is the best application of RCS in these operating conditions. Speed and direction control must always be real time.

Operation of slow speed scale models could be made realistic in their rate of motion and directional control with RCS. In these cases, I am not proposing exact response scaling as I carefully selected the term realistic. The concept is the selective use of the RCS computer to introduce scale like response to commands from the com with complete override in panic situations.

This concept has been used in model train systems to provide realistic type locomotive and train operation for acceleration, drifting and braking.

A high tonnage warship certainly responds differently to helm and engine commands than a high speed personal sport runabout. The heavy ship will take a lot longer to power up, down and stop. Many boat and ship models can be grossly overpowered so they react with far better performance than the prototype craft.

With RCS it is possible to build “canned” effects into manual input and autonomous control sequences. Remember the sequences can be optional and turned off on on at will with proper programming (command) of the RCS computer.

My vision is the shore (captain's) control will include a key pad as part of the interface. Any predefined control sequence can thus be sent to the TCS computer from the key pad via the data link to change on-board sequence of operations.

The key pad can also be used for control of any accessory or routines to control accessories. For example an entry code 789A might be used to turn on a mast light. Then code 789B used to start a computer sequence to blink the light on and off in one second intervals like a beacon. Finally 789C shuts the mast light off. It is all up to the imagination of the programmer and number of I/O pins with how they are programmed. That means there is almost no limit of the number or variation of realistic control functions available.

There are ways to extend control by using multiple processors to add additional I/O capabilities. That is far beyond the original scope of the RCS but certainly not unreasonable.