This document discusses principles of drone flight planning. It explains that flight planning is necessary to ensure drones capture images in the right places and fly safely, especially over large areas. Key aspects of flight planning include the area of interest, desired accuracy, flight height and path, ground control points, image overlap, and drone type. Modern software can automate flight planning by designing paths based on user inputs and calculating flight times and images. Such software can also import map data and avoid obstacles. Overall, proper flight planning is important for safety and obtaining high quality results from drone missions.

1. Drone Flight Planning:
Principles and Practices
(Part 1 of 2)
Dany Laksono
January 11th, 2019

2. Drone Flight Planning: Principles and Practice
• On drones and what it capable of
• The Why: Do we need Flight Planning?
• The How: Principles of flight plan design
• The What: Software to perform drone flight planning
• Some Notes on Drone Flight Planning

3. On Drones
and what it capable of doing
(Quad)Copter Fixed-wings
Hobbyist, Small-area mapping
Easier to control
Higher Resolution
Map Production
Covers Larger area
More Stable during flight

4. Photo by @dimaspratamajati
Drones are commonly used for hobbies:
• Aerial Photography
• Video Shooting
• Filmmaking
• etc

5. For more serious areas:
Orthophoto Mosaic Point Cloud/3D Models Digital Elevation (DEM)
Big question is: How?
Yuwono, 2018

6. The Why
Do we need
flight planning?
We need to make sure that our drones
captures images at the right time in the right
place
We don’t want to (and we can’t) control our
drones at all times, especially on larger areas
or where we can’t always see the drone
We want to make sure that the drone is
flying safely. That’s why we need to PLAN

7. Designing flight plan is
more than just about
‘area of interest’
Another very important
aspect is altitude
Why? Because of
this
Short Answer: design a flight plan
http://drones.newamerica.org/primer/

8. What differs this images?

9. The higher the drone flies, the larger the
area it covers
Higher also means = less photo for the same area

10. But higher flight also means
less details
Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) in a
drone flight could be roughly defined
as:
“How big each pixel is on the ground”
Ask yourself: Do I need a detailed view of
everything or just the global picture?
4000 px
3000px

11. Ground Sampling Distance (GSD)
is a measurement of accuracy
Smaller GSD shows more detailed view
For DJI Phantom 4 Pro flying at 80 meters:
Image Width: 5472px
Image Height: 3078px
Sensor Width: 13.2mm
Sensor Height: 8mm
Focal Length: 8.8mm
GSD = 2.36cm/px
(each pixel represent 2.36 cm in real
world unit)

12. If we want to have
A good
seamless
mosaic
Or
3D Models of AOI
We need to make sure that the images
overlapped with each other
Then
But wait, there’s more:

15. If we want to have
Models
registered to
real-world
coordinate,
Coordinate:
-7.765o;110.37o
3D buildings with accurate
measurement
Or
Then we need to employ Ground
Control Points (GCPs)

16. Ground Control Points
are points on the ground,
visible in the drone photos, and
are defined in a reference system,
Before or after the flight
GCPs are
measured using
GPS, or other
terrestrial
surveying method

17. Most drones
nowadays already
have onboard GPS,
which reduce the
need for GCPs
However, if you need
centimeter accuracy, you
either need to have GCPs or
improve the accuracy of
onboard GPS

18. A final flight plan
might looks like this
GCPs
The black dots __
represent
Point of exposure
or Waypoints
It is where the
Drone’s camera take
the photo
Image from http://www.mining.com

19. The What
So what is
flight planning?
In short:
We need to set the goal: what kind of end product(s)
do you want from the project?
Then,
We need to take into account
a. Areas (or objects) to cover
b. Desired Accuracy (or GSD)
c. Flight height and Flight Path
d. Ground Control Points (GCPs)
e. Overlap and Sidelap
f. Kinds of drones
g. Regulations, et-cetera

20. We used to calculate and manually
draw a flight plan
.. but it’s a long time ago. Nowadays, we
have apps for that
www.dronedeploy.com
droneharmony.com https://flylitchi.com/
www.precisionhawk.com/precisionflight https://heighttech.nl/flight-planning-software/

21. What can these apps do?
Automagically
design flight plan
based on user
input
parameters
(elevation,
overlap, etc)

22. What can these apps do?
It also calculates flight
time, number of
images and other
calculations

23. What can these apps do?
Drone flight path
for site
inspections

24. What can these apps do?
Façade
Inspection

25. What can these apps do?
Import
OpenStreetMap
(OSM) Data

26. What can these apps do?
Avoiding
predefined
obstacles
And much more

27. Some additional notes
• Drones are not toys (though it might looks like one), so always fly
with caution
• Although most recent drones have obstacle avoidance feature, it is
best to design a flight path that is free from obstacle
• Always pay attention to the drone. Though it might fly
automatically, thing could go awry very fast. Call the RTH function
or manual override should any problem occurs
• A good design yields good result

28. … And off we go

29. TERIMA KASIH