How to set a boat to loiter

MAVSDK
1

Our setup:
BlueOS V1.4.0-beta.17
ArduRover V4.5.7
FlightController Navigator
Frame Boat

We are attempting to use MavSDK to control our boat. One of the points of confusion for me is that the class MavSDK::Action has a function called hold. If I use an app such as ground control to set our boat to HOLD, it just shuts off the motors (as expected, i think). If i use ground control to set the mode to LOITER mode, the boats motors get kicked off if I move the boat (again as expected since it is trying to keep its initial position).

My question is how do I trigger LOITER mode via MavSDK? Can that be done for our current “boat” configuration. The documentation seems to imply that it will LOITER but I do not think it actually sets it to LOITER mode like the app Ground Control does.

Thanks in advance for the guidance/help.

2

This is a bit tricky because the current Mavsdk modes are very much geared and tested with PX4 and drones, so likely won’t work with boats properly.

We will have to implement MAVLink standard flight modes in ArduPilot as well as Mavsdk to properly address this issue.

If you want to sponsor this work, let me know and we can talk.

In the meantime, the only suggestion/idea I have is to use MavlinkPassthrough to use the Mavlink command yourself to get it in the right mode. This is only possible via C++ at the moment.

3

@JulianOes … sorry I forgot to reply quickly. But thank you for your guidance. I will go go down the route of trying to use MavlinkPassthrough