It's official: Follow-me, Waypoints, and POI coming to all Phantom models
- Thread starter VoicOfReason
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Too bad. My RTH is set for 200 ft, which could mean a forced ascent. Flying back manually is always my preferred way, of course. HL was sort of an intermediate ... RTH seems like total surrender. ;-)
I'd love to hear some ideas, too. Sounds like it would be interesting to try just for the heck of it or for people who like to do specific flight patterns planned out in advance.
ryantrax
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I agree totally with sky king. My P3A has been my most solid Phantom ever. I have also taken all the FW updates with zero problems. I never had any problems with my P1.1.1 but this thing hands down is the best Phantom experience yet.
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Waypoint would be awesome and I'd use it all the time. It depends on how much fine control I have over each waypoint. I'd like to not only be able to specify an altitude but also the speed that it flies there and also how long to remain at a particular waypoint. Think of it as similar to keyframing in videos. I would then set my flight path and essentially be free to control the camera while the Phantom does the flying. It'll take a bit of planning but I'd rather do that all day long.
I'm sure other people have their own uses for waypoint but that would be mine.
In the UK, my understanding of commercial operation is that a flight plan is needed. Filming an outdoor event would be predefined by using way points to show that the flight path avoids high risk areas, eg directly over the crowd.
DJI hasn't made it clear on the difference between GroundStation (Vision) vs Waypoint (Go/Pilot). GroundStation felt limited as the camera was restricted to tilt up/down. I hope the Waypoint has more intelligence, enabling the ability to yaw on a programmed flight path. I also hope they have the ability to curve the turn when it enters and exits each waypoint. The stop then turn feels very robotic and less fluid. I hope I aint asking too much..
That I could do.. Use course lock.
What I couldn't do was point A-B and ascend whilst slowly panning and slowly tilting down and staying on the subject...
I agree with you whole-heartedly. I too hope there would be some intelligent thought to how that feature is implemented. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what we get!
I think the primary use would be precision mapping. It is the best way to get an extremely accurately spaced photo set. This also lends itself well to photogrammetry.
If you guys want to get a glimpse of how waypoints and these features will look, check out the following video and go to 2:22:
You misunderstood. It has not yet been released for any of the Phantom models. DJI was simply illustrating a feature that will be coming soon to all of the models of the Phantom.
Given all the noise in other threads I can see that these features have not yet appeared. However, there have also been complaints (fair and unfair) that promotional material is misleading. I watched the video again, putting everything else to one side. They are introducing the new P3S and he clearly says he is "very excited to announce" follow me, which he describes in the present tense rather than future. If this video is a current advert for the P3S and I was a prospective P3S buyer I would be positively influenced by this info.
As it is, given the collective wisdom of the forum, I shall sit back patiently and wait for the balloon to go up.
As it is, given the collective wisdom of the forum, I shall sit back patiently and wait for the balloon to go up.
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I think people underestimate the difficulty in implementing waypoint navigation with user controlled camera positioning.
Simple waypoint navigation, like it was on the P2V+, is easy to implement: phantom just uses its orientation and current gps position to calculate the direction of flight to the next waypoint, and uses feedback from gps, to know when it is there. The problem starts when you need to allow the user camera control in the horizontal plane. If the camera had 2 degrees of freedom, like it has on the inspire, it would be relatively easy to allow you to do almost anything you want. Almost, because on the Inspire, the camera can not continuously rotate on its vertical axis. Because of this, you have to use yawing to get your camera shots. Here lies the problem: yawing impacts direction of flight, so in order to maintain a certain path with simultaneous yawing, orientation calculations have to compensate for the yawing. This is not trivial to do while keeping a smooth motion.
Think about a scenario like this: you are on a straight flight path from A to B, you have your camera pointed ahead and down 45 degrees, and you are starting to repeatedly yaw right and left, to perform seesaw panning. While doing that you have gusts of winds. In a perfect implementation, the P3 will be able to do all that while maintaining a straight line from A to B at a constant speed....
Doable? yes, but with very heavy control systems algorithms. This is why I always thought it would be simpler to have a camera that has its motion fully independent from the flight path. From my perspective, the Inspire still does not provide this solution as it cannot continuously rotate on its vertical axis. I guess this is why there will be a P4, a P5 or a P17. Each iteration will hint at what we can do and the next one will do it better, just slightly better....
Simple waypoint navigation, like it was on the P2V+, is easy to implement: phantom just uses its orientation and current gps position to calculate the direction of flight to the next waypoint, and uses feedback from gps, to know when it is there. The problem starts when you need to allow the user camera control in the horizontal plane. If the camera had 2 degrees of freedom, like it has on the inspire, it would be relatively easy to allow you to do almost anything you want. Almost, because on the Inspire, the camera can not continuously rotate on its vertical axis. Because of this, you have to use yawing to get your camera shots. Here lies the problem: yawing impacts direction of flight, so in order to maintain a certain path with simultaneous yawing, orientation calculations have to compensate for the yawing. This is not trivial to do while keeping a smooth motion.
Think about a scenario like this: you are on a straight flight path from A to B, you have your camera pointed ahead and down 45 degrees, and you are starting to repeatedly yaw right and left, to perform seesaw panning. While doing that you have gusts of winds. In a perfect implementation, the P3 will be able to do all that while maintaining a straight line from A to B at a constant speed....
Doable? yes, but with very heavy control systems algorithms. This is why I always thought it would be simpler to have a camera that has its motion fully independent from the flight path. From my perspective, the Inspire still does not provide this solution as it cannot continuously rotate on its vertical axis. I guess this is why there will be a P4, a P5 or a P17. Each iteration will hint at what we can do and the next one will do it better, just slightly better....
But the P3 can do this already. Send it up and out and then initiate RTH. All the way back you can rotate the bird and it will continue home crablike while you take shots at all angles. Surely point to point will allow the same degree of freedom?
And it's also possible already when using CL (which, is the point of CL), so following a path from point to point (essentially taking the right stick out of the input equation) is clearly doable and pretty trivial.
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