Every day, new drones are coming on the market and it has never been easier to create a flight plan. However, one of the most difficult tasks you have is controlling your UAVs in formation. This blog post will teach you how to make drones fly in formation with some guiding principles and design guidelines that can be used for any type of drone.
What is formation flying and how does it work ?
Formation flying is a type of drone piloting where the drones are kept in formation with one another. It can be done by either following GPS waypoints, manual control or other methods like visual tracking using camera footage from another UAV that has already managed to stay in formation. The main difficulties are keeping all your drones close enough together and staying on course since they will have different flight characteristics and aerodynamics that must be accounted for when designing the mission plan for them.
Guiding principles of UAVs in formation flight
The following are some guiding principles to use when designing your formation flying drones:
– Maintain the same altitude. As you move further from the drone at a higher altitude, its flight characteristics change and must be taken into account for it to remain in formation with other UAVs that were closer together
– Match speeds. The slower or faster speed of one aircraft will vary as each has different aerodynamics which means that only by matching their speeds can they stay in formation. This is also why maintaining a uniform height is so important – if one goes up while another drops back down, then both would be out of range from each other
– Keep your drones within sight of each other at all times. This is another reason why maintaining a uniform height will help, but for an even more successful formation mission you should have the pilots stay close to one another and use visual cues like landmarks or lines on the ground to keep them in line
– Keep your drones within the same speed limits as to avoid collision. If one drone is flying slower than the rest, then it will lag behind and there’s a risk that it’ll collide with another in front of it
– Avoid obstacles by keeping them out of range from each other. This can be done either by avoiding any obstacle for your entire flight or just making sure they’re not close enough together where they could hit an obstacle when you instruct all UAVs to go between two points A and B – this way at least some would still make it through even if others have crashed into something
Design guidelines for UAVs in formation flight
When designing your drones and the mission plan, there are some design principles to take into account:
– Equally distribute tasks between all of them. From calculating how much battery life will be needed since they may not have enough power if one is expected to do more work than others to assigning different roles like scout or escort – make sure each has an equally important task that won’t overload any of them with too many duties at once so they can still fly without crashing
– Take time and attention when programming camera angles. It’s difficult as it is just keeping a drone from colliding with another but even more so if you’re trying to program its movements based on what it sees. Make sure to test your flight plan beforehand and make adjustments accordingly
– Allow for human error as much as possible in the design process. It’s inevitable that something will go wrong, so it should be anticipated and designed with this in mind instead of being a scenario you hope never happens
– Take into account that your drones will have different flight characteristics. That’s why it’s important to plan ahead and take the time to design a mission that has flexibility in how it can be modified without crashing
– Program movements based on what you see from all drones as well – this way they’re not just following computer generated instructions but are actually being told by one another which direction to go in or when there is an obstacle nearby, leading them away from danger instead of towards it
– Plan for the unexpected. It’s hard enough to make drones fly in formation without risking them crashing or colliding with one another, but don’t forget that anything can happen and have a backup plan either by designing an alternate route if something gets stuck on the ground or just planning ahead so there is room for error
-Another thing you may want to consider when designing your drone formations is how much battery life they will need as well as what type of camera angles are best suited for their missions given where each UAV would be flying from its respective location
-The different types of cameras you might have on your drones – whether it’s a simple point-and-shoot digital camcorder camera like GoPro, DSLR stills, or even a 360-degree camera like the one used with Google Street View – are all going to affect how you can best use them for your formation missions
While there’s no such thing as a perfect flight plan, it’s important that if something goes wrong during any part of the mission, each UAV has enough battery power left in order to safely land and report its findings back to base so they can be analyzed and others may learn from their mistakes.
How to make drones fly in formation – a step-by-step guide
Before you even think about how to make drones fly in formation, it’s important that everyone on the ground is trained and familiar with their roles. There should be a clear hierarchy of who has authority over what as well as an established set of operating procedures for each phase of the mission
– First decide if your UAVs will have independent flight or if they’ll need to be connected together with a tether or cable. This will depend on the type of mission you’re planning
– Next, it’s important for each drone to know its role in the formation as well as how and when it should communicate back with base for instructions
– Finally, put your plan into action – but don’t forget to test it beforehand and make adjustments accordingly
– If, for whatever reason, the plan doesn’t work out as expected. Remember that there should always be a backup plan – just in case!
Common problems with drone formations, and how to fix them
– The UAVs are too far away from one another to communicate effectively
Solution: this can be addressed by adding a second set of ground stations or, if you’re using wireless communication, make sure the signal isn’t being cut off for any reason
– One drone appears to be programmed as the leader but is going about its tasks incorrectly. It’s not responding to commands given over wifi and it’s causing problems with all other drones in formation
Solution: try reprogramming that specific drone while leaving others unaffected – ask someone who has programming experience on site (if possible) or contact your remote staff with questions
Resources for creating your own drone formations
– The FAA’s guide for how to make drones fly in formation
– DIY Drones – this is a great forum where you can post your own questions or find answers from other drone enthusiasts on any topic. For example: if you wanted help figuring out how to put together an octopus (or eight!) UAVs that are all tethered off of one central control station, someone there would be able to offer some tips and advice
– Youtube also has many explanations about different types of formations as well as tutorials on specific projects like setting up a quad copter with a 360 camera rig attached so the operator could capture footage when flying around indoors
The internet is full of information whether it’s related to how to make drones fly in formation or other subjects (or even when it comes to assembling the drones themselves!)
