RC Ekranoplan Uses LIDAR to Fly In Ground Effect

Ekranoplans are a curious class of vehicle; most well known for several Soviet craft designed to operate at sea, flying just above the waves in ground effect. [rctestflight] had accidentally come across the ground effect flight regime himself years ago, and decided it was time to build an ekranoplan of his own.

I want to see little ekranoplans in at least three top 10 pop film clips by summer’s end. Please and thank you.

While ground-effect flight can be quite stable for a heavy, human-scale craft, the smaller RC version suffered more from minor perturbations from the wind and such. Thus, a Pixracer autopilot was installed, and combined with a small LIDAR device to accurately measure altitude above the ground. With some custom tweaks to the Ardupilot firmware, the craft was able to cleanly fly along barely a foot off the ground.

The final effect is almost mesmerizing; it appears as if the craft is hovering via some heretofore unknown technology rather than just flying in the usual sense. It’s still sensitive to breezes and sudden drops in the terrain lead to a temporary escape from the ground effect region, but the effect is nonetheless impressive. It’s a nerve wracking video at times, though, with quite a few near misses with traffic and children. Regardless of the nature of your experimental craft, be cognisant of your surroundings. We’ve seen [rctestflight]’s Ardupilot experiments before, too. Video after the break.