UAS Flight Planning

The last lecture for AT21900 was over mission planning. The mission planner used for the lecture is Ardupilot's mission planner. This is an open-source auto-pilot software for unmanned vehicles. Knowing how to use mission planners is important because UAS operators may have to use multiple different mission planning software. Although the class has went over other flight planning software in the past, being familiar with more than one software can make it easier to learn how to use new software in the future. Mission planners are usually pretty similar, but may have differences. Users should look out for any differences whenever they are using software they've never used before.

This is the Flight Data tab on Ardupilot Mission Planner 

Mission planner has three boxes on the flight data tab. The box on the right shows the map and the mission area. In the photo above, there is no UAS connected to mission planner so it just shows the area where the mission would be. The box on the bottom left side shows some information about the unmanned vehicle during flight. Altitude is how far off the ground the UAS is. Ground speed is how fast the vehicle is traveling across the ground. Distance to WP shows how far the UAS is from its next waypoint. Yaw shows how much the vehicle is yawing in degrees. Vertical speed is speed up and down. The last number shows how far the UAS is from the controller.

The box in the top left is the attitude indicator.

The attitude indicator provides a lot of data. The curved line right below 0, at the top of the image, shows the aircraft's roll in degrees. The lines below that display the vehicles current pitch. The numbers along the top are part of a compass and show what direction the vehicle is facing. The rectangle on the left displays aircraft speed and the rectangle on the right displays altitude. Below the speed tape there are two more specific speeds. AS stands for airspeed and GS stands for ground speed. It is important that airspeed and ground speed are provided. Operators need to know airspeed because aircraft maneuver and stall based on airspeed. Ground speed is important because it lets the operators know how fast the vehicle is moving over the ground.

Airspeed is affected by wind speed and wind direction. Something every pilot needs to know is how an aircraft is affected by tailwinds and headwinds. If an aircraft is flying in a tailwind, ground speed will be increased while airspeed will not be affected. Aircraft flying in a headwind will have a faster airspeed and a slower ground speed. A headwind is useful for takeoffs as the aircraft has a better rate of lift when flying in a headwind.

This is the Flight Plan tab in Ardupilot Mission Planner.

The next tab in mission planner is 'flight plan' . This is where the flight plan is created and where waypoints are put on the map. Each of the waypoints above has a white circle around it. This circle is the radius that the UAS has to be in to be considered at the waypoint. Mission planner allows the operator to choose different tasks for each waypoint.

These are most of the options that each waypoint has.

 Before the mission plan is complete, the user needs to check every waypoint in mission planner. Some mission planners have default settings that may be unknown to or unwanted by the user. For example. mission planner has the home point set at GPS (0,0) by default. If the operator does not know this and doesn't change it, they may lose or damage their UAS by telling it to return to home. This is why it is important that all users go through all the details when using new mission planners and check to make sure that everything is set up correctly.