Mission Planning
This command generates a drone flight plan for taking aerial
photos. Before running this command, set the Coordinate System for
the drawing using the Drawing Setup command. Also before this
command, you can optionally load an aerial image into the drawing
using the Place Google Earth Image command.
Basic Workflow
1. When the Mission Planning command starts, it places a dialog
on the left side of the drawing.
2. Select a path mode. Defaults to Area Scan: Single Pass.
3. Draw a Polyline to perform the Area Scan on. The Polyline must
be closed for an area scan or structure scan and must be open for a
corridor scan. Structure scans and corridor scans can only be
performed on polylines that do not contain arcs.
4. While Area Scan or Structure Scan is the selected Mode there
will be a “Pick Perimeter” button to select the polyline. If the
Path Mode is Corridor Scan this button becomes “Pick Corridor”.
5. Click “Pick Home” then select the location in CAD you wish to
launch the drone from. You may be asked to select a home position
after selecting the scan polyline.
6. The flight plan should automatically be plotted. The number of
images, estimated flight time and the area covered will be
displayed at the top of the mission plan dialog. Use the parameter
sliders to adjust the flight plan in real time. Yellow points are
waypoints without images and white points are waypoints with
images.
7. When the plan is satisfactory, press the “Save Plan” button to
save the mission plan as a .plan file. These files can be read by
the DJI Companion App, Drone Deploy and qGroundControl. For
example, the .plan file can be loaded into Drone Deploy where the
mission can be edited further and uploaded to the drone.
Features
Icons: The Mission Home position is represented by the
Yellow target. The flight plan is drawn in solid White. Each
location where a photo is taken will be shown as a circle with an
arrowhead inside. The direction of this arrow head is the heading
of the camera while taking this image.
Height Above Ground: This setting controls the height above
ground level the aircraft will fly for the mission. The highest
allowed height is 400 ft and the lowest allowed height is 40ft.
Higher heights result in fewer images taken.
Flight Speed: This setting controls the flight speed of the
aircraft. Faster speeds result in lower mission times. The lowest
speed is 1ft/s and the fastest speed allowed is 50ft/s
Frontlap: This setting controls the amount of overlap in the
forward direction of each image. A front lap of 60% minimum is
recommended. Larger overlap results in more images.
Sidelap: This setting controls the amount of side overlap of
each image. A side lap of 70% minimum is recommended. Larger
overlap results in more images.
Gimbal Angle: This setting controls the Gimbal angle for the
flight. 90 degrees points the camera straight down while smaller
angles orient the camera closer to horizontal. The recommended
Gimbal angle is 75 degrees.
Azimuth: This setting controls the angle flight lines for
the Area and Structure scan will be drawn at. Adjust this setting
if necessary if the generated plan does not completely cover the
scan area or the drone would fly over areas that are not desired. 0
degrees points north and the degrees increase in the clockwise
direction
Corridor Width: This setting only becomes active while in
Corridor Scan Mode. This controls the amount of back and forth
passes the drone will take along the corridor. The more passes the
wider the corridor becomes.
FOV: This setting should be sent to the FOV of the camera on
the drone
Aspect Ratio X: This setting should be sent to the X portion
of the aspect ratio of the camera on the drone
Aspect Ratio Y: This setting should be sent to the Y portion
of the aspect ratio of the camera on the drone
Delete Flight Plan: This button will delete everything in
the flight plan
Reverse Flight Plan: This button will reverse the direction
of the flight plan
Constant Heading: Checking this box has the heading of the
drone remain constant throughout the mission (except when not
possible with a corridor scan and outer perimeter of structure
scan). Unchecking the box will have the drone fly more like an
airplane.
Show Image Coverage: Pressing the “Show Image
Coverage” button will draw the area that the camera will capture
during the mission. To see the area of each individual image,
enable the “Show Individual Images” option.
Simulator: Pressing the “Run Simulation” button after a
mission plan has been made, will run a simulation with the drone
represented by a red target. It will move along the path with the
path traversed highlighted in red. Use the Simulation Speed drop
box to speed up or slow down the simulation. The “Run Simulation”
button will become the “Stop Simulation” button while the
simulation is running. Pressing this button stops the simulation.
The current image count will appear next to this button and update
as the drone flies over each of the image points.
Automatic Checks: While generating the mission plan,
the routine automatically checks to ensure the entire scan area is
covered by the images. If it is not, the user will be shown a
warning. Use the “Show Image Coverage” features to view what area
is not covered. Use the parameter sliders to adjust the mission
plan until the full area is covered. While generating the mission
plan, the routine automatically checks to ensure that the mission
plan is within 400 meters of the home position so that a line of
sight from the operator to the drone is possible. If the mission
plan extends beyond 400m, the user will receive a warning.
Area Scan Single Pass: This Path Mode creates a flight plan
that covers a selected perimeter, only flying the drone over the
area once. The flight paths are drawn in the direction of the
Flight Angle and with offsets that are a function of the Height
Above Ground, Sidelap and camera parameters.
Area Scan Double Pass: This Path Mode is the same as the
Single Pass mode except the drone will not fly over the area two
times. The second pass will have the flight lines draw
perpendicular to the previous pass.
Corridor Scan: This Path Mode will create a mission plan
along an open polyline with each image evenly spaced out along the
polyline. The spacing is a function of the Height Above Ground,
Sidelap and camera parameters. Adjusting the Corridor Width slider
to be larger than 1 pass will result in the scanned area being
wider as each pass is made at an offset from the original.
Structure Scan: This Path Mode will create the same path as
a Area Scan: Single Pass with the addition of a perimeter scan at
the end. The Perimeter Scans sets the heading of the drone camera
to be towards the inside of the closed polyline. This feature
allows structures to be scanned with more images from better 3D
models of the exterior vertical surfaces. The scan polyline can
only include line segments.
Elevation Compensation: For use on highly uneven
terrain. The drone is only able to sense the height above ground
level from where it was launched. Terrain that has large elevation
differences can result in the camera captures too large or too
small of an area, or in the presence of a large hill, cause the
drone to crash. This setting retrieves the elevation at each photo
point and applies an offset to the Height Above Ground level so
that the drone’s actual height above ground level at each photo
point is the desired value.
Stop For Pictures: Enabling this setting will have the drone
stop at each Geolocation to take each picture. This may result in
more accurate image overlap and stability but will increase flight
time and use more of the drone’s battery.
DJI Companion APP
Basic Workflow
1. After launching the app there will be a screen
that say it is registering with DJI. This screen will hold itself
until a response is received. If this screen gets stuck on for a
while then it is something wrong with DJI’s servers.
2. Upon success the main window will be
shown.
3. Press load plan and select the mission plan
created by pointcloud. The screen should look similar to this
image.
4. Press upload to aircraft. Once the mission is
done uploading the Waypoint State should say “READY_TO_EXECUTE” and
the Start Mission button will be enabled. Sometimes the drone won’t
report this right away. Try uploading the plan again or restarting
the app if this happens. There are a lot of background threads
running within DJIs SDK and some of these errors are a result of
not knowing exactly how they work.
5. Press Start Mission when ready. The mission
will be executed, and the drone will auto land when completed. If
the mission fails to start, an error message will be shown to the
user. The Aircraft position will be shown on the map and the
aircraft Altitude will be updated in real time. There is other
aircraft state information displayed in the app that is mainly used
for testing purposes.
6. You can pause or stop the mission at any time
while it is running.
This process should result in a lot of pop-ups to be displayed. If
everything is running as expected they should all report
“NO_ERROR”.
Features
Load Plan: This button will open the Windows File Selection
Tool. Select the .plan file for the current mission. If there are
no problems the application will report “NO_ERROR”.
Get and Show Flyzone: This button will retrieve the nearby
flyzones and display them on the map.
Upload to Aircraft: This button will upload the selected
plan to the aircraft. The program should report “No Error” if the
plan is possible for the drone to execute and will report errors
otherwise. In some rare cases, this may return “NO_ERROR” but the
Waypoint State will revert back to “READY_TO_UPLOAD” instead of
“READY_TO_EXECUTE”. This is an internal error with the drone
firmware that the DJI SDK will not report. Making a slight
modification to the mission plan in the Pointcloud mission planner
should solve this issue.
Simulation: It may be useful to simulate the mission plan
beforehand. Enabling the Simulation toggle switch will put the
drone in simulation mode. The application will run as normal, but
the drone will not take off. The drone must be turned off and on
again to exit Simulation Mode.
Pause/Resume Mission: This button can be used while a
mission is running to pause or resume the mission.
There is an option to swap batteries when pausing the mission. As
of writing this guide the feature does not work. Disconnecting the
drone and reconnecting it causes an error with DJIs software
preventing the mission from being continued. This needs to be fixed
before using this feature
Start/Stop Mission: This button is used to start the mission
plan, or if the mission is running it is used to stop the
mission.
Go Home: This button will have the drone return home and
land.
Take Picture: This button will have the drone camera take a
picture and save it to the SD card if enough space is
available.
Pulldown Menu Location: Survey
Keyboard Command: mission_planning
Prerequisite: Set Coordinate System in Drawing Setup