Drone SDK supporting free-flight control

Question

This is my first time getting into drones. I am looking at DJI drones, currently as it seems most promising from a documentation and reviews point of view.

Basically, I would like to program a drone(s) to fly a certain pattern and take pictures when a certain criteria is met. For example, I would like the drone to take off and fly around a small park, stopping to take a picture of each tree it encounters, automatically (auto-piloted / driven by some "AI").

Now I glanced thru the DJI SDK documentation, and so far it SEEMS this is possible (via FlightControl class). But im not sure.

Question:

Can my requirements be met with current drone SDK technologies?

Answer 1

Yes, the correct SDK, 4.11.1 will do everything you mentioned. You will need to do some location calculations but that's about it.

The sample will almost do everything you want as-is, with minor changes.

Answer 2

With the DJI Mobile SDK you can use the Mission classes to automatically fly a given set of coordinates (waypoints) and do some actions once you arrive at a waypoint, eg take a picture.

However the SDK has limitations:

• The SDK is unable to detects objects in the video stream. Therefore it is needed to use your own code to detect objects yourself.
• The way the drone flies to the waypoint is quite limited, eg the drone will always face the camera in the direction of flight.
• When using the DJI Mission classes, a change of the route during execution is only possible with the use of timeline Missions by adding timeline elements to the list.

As you already assumed in the comment: Yes, the Mobile SDK is more advanced than Windows SDK.