3D Robotics is thrilled to introduce the Follow Me feature, the latest adventure in autonomous flight. Follow Me mode allows you to be your own one-man aerial film crew: Capture yourself in action, with all the freedom of spontaneity and zero pre-planning, even when there’s no one around to helm the sticks for you. Just select “Follow” in DroidPlanner, strap on your Android phone or throw your tablet in your backpack, and your drone will follow wherever you go—and keep the camera trained on you the whole time! Place your Android device on another vehicle—say a car, boat, or rover—and Follow Me tracks that for you, too.
Best of all, it’s totally free from 3D Robotics, and it’s available today. You just need the beta of the new DroidPlanner 2.0 (free here) and the latest release candidate (3.2 RC 2) version of Arducopter (free here).*
To get the beta of DroidPlanner, please follow these instructions:
To get the latest release candidate of Arducopter, select "Beta software" from the firmware upload screen of Mission Planner or APM Planner.
Both of these will be coming out of beta in a few weeks (after the Sparkfun AVC), so if you'd rather not be using beta software, just sit tight and it will automatically come to you with the next public update.
Follow Me frees you to be yourself, by yourself. Happy flying!
*Please note that as advised in the warning notice in Mission Planner and APM-Planner 2, Beta versions and release candidates are by definition unstable and should only be used by expert operators and only to help the developers test the code during the pre-release test cycle in direct coordination with the developers. In those versions, bugs are very likely to be present and the operator should be aware of a significantly higher operational risk and choose location and operation modes for flights accordingly, as well as be prepared for the possibility of undesired behavior of the aircraft and even a catastrophic failure.
Comments
What happens if in follow me mode if the radio signal (tracking signal) from your phone is lost? Can my Pixhawk be set to loiter or maybe a loiter for a certain time then rth, or loiter for a certain time then land?
When I use my droid phone and check the pixhawk status via ardupilot, it connects pretty good, however when or as I'm shoving the phone (with antenna still attached) I almost always lose the connection to the pixhawk.
@David - Glad it worked well for you! From the Droidplanner UI you can swipe right on the flight data screen and see adjustments for the leash length and guided mode altitude. All of the other parameters that would control speed and response are part of the loiter controller, so you can change those in the tuning interface in Mission Planner or the full parameter list. Playing with the yaw slew and acceleration might also be interesting, especially if you have a hard-mounted or 2-axis gimbal.
I gave it a quick test flight with my Y6 and it worked better than I expected for a short test! What took me a minute was to determine that the RC control needed to be in Guided mode for Follow Me on Droidplanner to work.
The only thing I'm curious about is what settings can be changed in the Droidplanner interface. I just saw the button, but I didn't know how to adjust altitude, follow speed, etc? Where can I make these changes? I don't have a GPS tablet so I used my HTC One.
Can't wait!!
Too sweet!!!!
get predator drone style plane with apm
follow inside car, down highway
try to convince cops it was real
@Jonathan, Yes, all the control parameters that apply to waypoint navigation in Guided Mode apply here. So you can change the waypoint speed, and all the gains that control how waypoints are traversed. In this video you can see there is quite a bit of wind in most of the shots. The copter is fairly dampened to deal with these disturbances. You can certainly make it much more aggressive.
http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/loiter-mode/#Tuning
Thorsten: Yes, one Pixhawk can follow another, via the Mission Planner Swarming feature.
Great feature! Congrats!
Hi all,
one question: can one Pixhawk follow another one (using the 2nd telemetry port) or is a DroidPlanner device required?
TIA and kind regards,
Thorsten
Is there a speed limit that it can keep up with (besides the physical limit of the aircraft, of course)? How quickly will it make changes to keep up?
For example, if it were following a vehicle that was making fast turns and accelerating, could the user program how aggressive the aircraft tries to keep up?
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