Works with any types of drones supported by UgCS and any Pelco-D PTZ platforms with current angles reporting.

It will be available in source codes to adapt to any hardware.

Hi,

we implemented radar/laser altimeter support for DJI M210/M210V2 drones (in addition to previously supported M600/M600Pro/A3).

Set consists of UgCS SkyHub onboard computer, radar or laser altimeter, set of cables and software.

In general, we recommend using a radar altimeter (finally we selected http://en.nanoradar.cn/Article/detail/id/372.html).

After 2 years of practice and feedback from our customers, we decided that laser altimeters have too many restrictions - they don't work reliable under the bright sun, light fog, over water.

Internally the system is pretty complex (diagram for A3 is below, for M210 is pretty the same), but it works :)

Full description and documentation here - https://industrial.ugcs.com/true-terrain-following

UgCS

(image taken from https://www.pgc.umn.edu/data/arcticdem/)

I would like to say a big thanks again to ArcticDEM project (https://www.pgc.umn.edu/data/arcticdem/). Using their elevation data it is possible to fly drones safely in parts of the globe not covered by "standard" sources of maps and elevation data. ArcticDEM covers a huge area north of 60°.

Look at this Google Earth view - a random point somewhere in Norway, with coordinates  69°45'31.73"N  19°52'0.85"E. According to Google data, the elevation here is ~335m.

Here is the same point in UgCS (without ArcticDEM)

Lets do 5 seconds of magic in UgCS:

• Click on the Map options icon and select Map layers

• Click on the Elevation tab, and then click Add

• Enter something (ArcticDEM for example) in the Name field, select External in the Type field, paste http://terrain.ugcs.com/arctic_dem_32m to Remote Source, then click Create

• Make the new elevation data layer active, then close Map Layers window

That's all. Now in the same point we have an elevation of 352m.

It may not seem like a big difference (~17 meters), but even such a small error can be disastrous if you fly a route like that with a magnetometer attached to a rope.

It is totally worth spending those 5 extra seconds and have a bit more confidence...

In some areas I have observed a difference of up to tens meters (Greenland, Svabald, etc).

Very important: this online source of ArcticDEM data for UgCS was build using a 32m grid. It is enough for most missions and is much better compared with SRTM, but you should be careful in case of very low altitude flights.

Another important note: in same places ArcticDEM can have voids and processing artifacts, especially over water near the shore lines. So please check your routes carefully...

Safe flights,

UgCS team

Here is footage from software showing our software capability to simultaneously plan and execute mission with 3 different drones. Arducopter, Microdrone MD4-200 and Mikrokopter were used.

As we support at this moment Arducopter, Mikrocopter, ArDrone, Microdrone this demo can be interesting at least for professional users of Arducopters.

Software specs are here - http://www.ugcs.com/index.php/products

We have only private beta today, but if you want to be a beta-tester, you can write request to ugcs@ugcs.com and we will provide a path to obtain preview copy of our software.