A Mission Planner Tutorial

figure 1: Mission Planner flight Data screen

An Intro To Mission Planner

Planning out a flight can be a lot of work; you have to check for clearance, check what airspace your in, make sure you aren't flying in an area that you shouldn't be, etc etc. Thankfully, there is a multitude of software that an individual can use to help set up autonomous flights, or assist in manual flights. One such software is Mission Planner. It is a very easy to use, yet powerful software that once set up  can easily communicate with the aircraft either via USB or radio telemetry. By doing so you can use a computer as a flight controlling device in order to perform complex missions in the air.

Disclaimer:

Due to covid-19 I do not have access to the regular computer that I use, and as such, cannot run Mission planner on my PC. So images used in this blog will be from the public domain, or other students taking the course AT 21900 at Purdue University. 

Missions:

Start

When starting on mission planner you are first greeted with the home screen. From there, you connect to your drone with it's GPS on, and you will then see the area that your flight operation is taking place in. From here you need to set your home point, which is done by clicking the home location button over the three blank boxes. The other option for setting the home point is by clicking on the home point icon on the world map, and then moving it to where you want it on the home map. Lastly, you need to set a takeoff altitude that the UAV will ascend to at the start of the flight, you do this under the Altitude portion of the waypoint section.

Setting your waypoints

Adding waypoints for your vehicle is very simple on this software. You simply have to click on the map to add them. Once you have your waypoints you can change what they stand for, such as your takeoff point, landing point, or areas where you want the drone to hover.

Finalizing the mission

To finalize a mission you need to set a land point, otherwise the mission will not begin. By doing so you need to select a waypoint and click the drop-down, from their select it as the landing point. From there, on the home screen you can see the full mission and it's different waypoints. From their you simply have to transfer the flight plan to the vehicle by clicking on WPs, from their the mission will begin.

Conclusion:

Mission Planner, and other related software, greatly increase the capacity for work with UAS. By understanding how software like this works you will have a higher level of efficiency in your operations, and will gain vital skills in the UAS sector.