Want my motor board to navigate autonomously to me

I plan to have a large board (Mother Ship) which will help me get up on foil with my small prone foil board. Mother Ship will be set up with a Foil Drive Assist Plus (FDAP) to power it around like a regular motorboat. I can easily equip the Mother Ship with a rudder and servo for steering. Typically, I will get up on foil and let go of Mother Ship’s hand controller, the hand controller will stay with Mother Ship. I will ride a wave, or ride downwind, on my small foil board and soon be far away from Mother Ship. I want Mother Ship to navigate at a set slow speed, probably 30% throttle, toward me as soon as I am a few meters away from her. I don’t mind her taking some time to get to me, waiting will be my punishment for falling, I don’t want her speeding around and wasting precious battery energy. I understand I will need to have a GPS tracker (I’m guessing mine might be an Apple Watch) and Mother Ship would have a GPS tracker. I would like to be able to see the location of Mother Ship on my watch with speed and distance as well. I’m hoping to get a list of all the components I’ll need including the rudder servo and learn how to integrate them with Mother Ships’s FDAP and the rudder. Thanks very much to anyone who contributes. Cheers.

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Nothing of the shelf will do what you want, but Pixhawk or Ardupilot would be a good place to start.

The FDAP isn’t really powerful enough for tow, or push. But if you have one, It’s a good starting point to experiment with.

Make something basic and see if the fundamentals are there first.

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Thanks for the information. I’ll see what I can find out about Pixhawk and Autopilot.

My system is very simple and energy efficient. Mother Ship stops beside me. I climb on her. I use her as a dock start platform. Off I go again. There is no need for lots of power to tow or push me up.