Field Notes
Technical writing on autonomous SAR, drone navigation, and the systems that find people.
Configurable Detection Targets and GPS-Resilient Patrol
Overwatch Orchestrate now supports configurable detection targets -- Person Search, Vessel Detection, Vehicle Search -- with realistic FOV-based detection simulation. Plus GPS dropout/recovery handling that keeps the relay running.
Read article →Fleet Advisor: Intelligent Relay Orchestration
How the Overwatch Fleet Advisor uses a physics-based decision engine to dynamically optimise drone relay parameters -- swap timing, patrol speed, fleet dispatch -- in real time, with no internet required.
Read article →When Autonomous Missions Fail
Handoff failures, comms loss, detection misses, weather degradation. How the safety system handles every failure mode across Overwatch Core and Orchestrate.
Read article →From Map to Drone in 60 Seconds
The complete Overwatch Core operator workflow. Draw a search area, configure altitude and overlap, generate the mission package, upload over WiFi, and launch. Under 60 seconds of hands-on time.
Read article →The 7-State Flight Supervisor
Inside the finite state machine that governs every Overwatch Core flight. Seven states from idle to emergency, with battery thresholds, geofence enforcement, VIO drift monitoring, and wind limits.
Read article →24/7 Coastal Patrol with Drone Fleets
How 3 drones and 8 batteries maintain continuous coastal coverage using Overwatch Orchestrate. Relay mechanics, coverage gap calculation, and cost comparison to crewed patrol.
Read article →Introducing Overwatch Orchestrate
A fleet relay layer for 24/7 autonomous drone patrol. Battery-aware handoff, waypoint resume, continuous patrol logic, and exception-only alerting for 2-10 drones.
Read article →Introducing Overwatch Core
A browser-based mission planning and autonomous flight system for the Parrot ANAFI UKR. Draw a search area, generate a grid, upload, launch. Under 5 minutes from arrival to airborne.
Read article →Building Onboard Human Detection for SAR Drones
Running TFLite inference on a Snapdragon 845 at the edge. Why SAR detection must happen onboard, how the pipeline works, and what confidence threshold actually means in the field.
Read article →Boustrophedon Search Patterns: The Math Behind Systematic Grid Search
How to compute sweep spacing from camera FOV and altitude, align sweep lines to polygon geometry, and convert grid points into relative flight vectors.
Read article →GPS-Denied Navigation: Why SAR Drones Must Fly Without Satellites
Visual-inertial odometry, drift compensation, and hybrid navigation architecture. How to build a flight plan that survives GPS dropout in exactly the environments SAR operates.
Read article →Why SAR Teams Need Autonomous Drones, Not Better Pilots
Manual flight creates coverage gaps. Video feed monitoring causes fatigue-induced misses. The case for autonomous grid search with onboard detection over skilled piloting.
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