Mission

Creating Flight Mission

You can plan your mission in advance from the Drone Operation Center and from the Ground IOS & Android applications as well. Missions can be planned ahead of time with the aim of booking the drone flights with all the details of flyzones, pilot, location, weather forecast, geography and risks. If the mission is recurrent, you can save the mission as template to be used in future. Once the mission happens, logbook is maintained detailing out all the incidents and success / damages to the drone or environment.  Below are the steps outlining the details of creating missions via operation center and the ground control applications.

Drone Operation Center

Drone operation center enables the user to create missions and set the flight details while watching out for warnings of the area coverage.

1. Create a new mission from the New Mission button on the top-left menu on dashboard or go to the Mission tab in the left menu on dashboard and click on the New Flight button on the top right corner on the Mission page.

2. Mission planning page will appear. You have to add as much detail about the mission as you can in order to maintain record of the flight for the future purpose. There are four tabs here, namely Mission, Flyzones, Waypoints and Map markers. All these are described briefly in the following point, and also discussed in detail in the separate section.

3. On the left side, add the general information of the mission, including assigned crew, name of the pilot, flight name, type, start date & time, end date & time, altitude, equipment required for the flight, any checklist, and any associated risks. Add notes and / or tags for the filter purpose within the logbook. You can save the flight without saving the end date for now, however the flight will only be saved in the logbook only if the end date is mentioned.

4. On the right side of the new mission page is the map where you can manually draw the flyzone, and read through the warnings, if ther is any saved for the flight over the respective area.

5. There are three separate menus [2, 3 & 4] on the map to create flyzone, check warnings, get the local advisories and so on. Here there is a brief detail of every menu, however these are separately mapped out in detail.

a. On the menu, at the top of the map, there are four icons;

1. Select & Move: Select this icon, and you can move the map however and wherever you want to. It’s as easy as clicking on the map and dragging the area. The map will load accordingly.
2. Draw Flyzone: Select the second-left icon from the menu, which is a fly-zone icon, and click on the map to start drawing the fly-zone. You just have to create the boundary of the fly-zone. Press enter to end drawing. There is another option in the same icon-menu of no-fly zone. This means that this area is restricted. This is also as simple as drawing the fly-zone; click on no-fly zone from the icon-menu and start drawing. Press enter when done.  
3. The third icon from the left on the menu is the way point. This icon is used to draw the way points on the map to execute the flights.
4. The right most icon is the map markers that users can use to add custom markers for obstacles, etc. to the map.

b. On the top right menu, there is an option to search the location on the map and zoom in and out buttons.

c. On the lower-right corner of the map there are three icons, brief detail of which is given below.

1. Weather forecast: The top-most icon is for weather forecast that will show the detailed weather condition & forecast, including temperature, wind information, cloud coverage, visual distance etc. of the location selected on the map.
2. Map Layers: The second icon enables the map layer to provide a clear picture of what’s going on in your fly-zone. There are several map layers, including layers for municipality, waterways, railroads, wind turbines, bridges, power lines, road layers, etc.
3. Geoposition: The last icon will show you specific coordinates for the location of your fly-zone.

6. Once you upload all the respective information of mission, draw up the flyzone, waypoints, and add up the map markers, you can now publish the mission. Click on the Publish button at the top right corner. You will have three options; publish in planning, logbook or save as template.

a. Publish in Planning: All missions can be saved in planning. These are the future missions that will be executed by the specified team at the specified time in accordance with the mission details.

b. Publish in Logbook: If the mission has the end date and time, only then it can be published in the logbook. All the previous flights are saved in the logbook. To see the detail of any flight, click on it, complete details will be displayed. Logbook is discussed in detail in a separate section.  

c. Save as Template: If you want to use the same exact mission iteratively, you can save this mission as template. When you want to duplicate the mission, you can access the template, and plan it accordingly. Publish when all information is uploaded.

Ground Control IOS App

You can create mission from the IOS app, as well. To do so, follow the below steps.

1. Login the application, it will direct you to the fly-zones with a map displayed and a menu at the bottom of the screen.
2. Search the location from the top bar and click on fly here button on the map, it will direct you to the location, where you can create the flyzone, and draw the way points. Both these steps are explained in the respective headings of flyzone and way points. Once the location is mapped out, click on the next button.
3. Flight plan will open, add all the respective details of the drone flight including crew members, drone, equipment, and any other notes.
4. If you want to start the flight right now, click on the start button. It will redirect you to the workflow page. Read the details of the live flight on the workflow page. If you are planning the flight, click on the three-dot button on the top right of the screen, it will ask you if you want to save the flight in the logbook. If you choose this option, the flight will be saved in the logbook,
5. You can access the flight details through the Mission button from the bottom menu on the screen. All the saved flights with all the details can be accessed from here.

Ground Control Android App

Missions can be created in the same way in android application as in IOS.

1. Login the application, it will direct you to the fly-zones with a map displayed and a menu at the bottom of the screen. Search the location from the top bar and click on fly here button on the map, it will direct you to the respective location.
2. Create the fly-zone, and draw the way points. Both these steps are explained in the respective headings of flyzone and way points. Once the location is mapped out, click on the next button.
3. Flight plan will open, add all the respective details of the drone flight including crew members, drone, equipment, and any other notes.
4. Click on the start button to initiate the flight. If you want to save the flight in the logbook, click on the Log flight button on the screen. The mission with all the respective details will be saved in the logbook.
5. You can access the logbook through the Mission button from the bottom menu on the screen. All the planned, logged and templates save in the workspace will be displayed here.