Inconsistent/non-appropriate mission execution

I have posted the issue to ArduPilot Github, but so far there hasn’t be any discussion yet.
See the issue for more detailed information: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/issues/13875

In my opinion the main issue here is that it is not clear if the current way of the execution is purposefully like that. This makes it harder to predict the behavior on mission execution as it may be a sum of multiple commands in certain cases.

This makes the it hard for 3rd party mission planning software to do abstraction as the small details are so important on certain combination of DO and NAV commands and how they are ordered. I’m hoping that at some point developers could define a “standard” or guide a how missions must be executed by autopilot. For example some kind of simple state machine that would make it easy to replicate and check generated missions on 3rd party planning software.

Use a SITL to test if all is working before using a real copter.

Well simulation is one way of doing the validation, a bit on the heavy side. But how one could validate the mission without watching the simulation? To include SITL to 3rd party “missionplanner” for validation would need that writing dynamically generated tests are easy.

However I would still see it appropriate to define how mission items needs to be executed.

Well simulation is one way of doing the validation, a bit on the heavy
side. But how one could validate the mission without watching the

I’m flag you asked. You use ArduPilot’s autotest suite. If you write the
script correctly, nobody changes that behaviour without us knowing about
it :slight_smile:

https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/the-ardupilot-autotest-framework.html

simulation? To include SITL to 3rd party “missionplanner” for validation
would need that writing dynamically generated tests are easy.

Note that the autotest framework isn’t related to MissionPlanner here.
It’s just one of our regression suites.

However I would still see it appropriate to define how mission items needs
to be executed.

Yes.

You described in detail in here how to recreate the issue. Those steps
could relatively easily be made an autotest.

Peter