Hi, we are using multicopters to drop mangrove seeds and would really like autonomous route planning taking elevation data from high resolution orthomosaics into account.
As an example, right now we map the area and then use the Ortho to manually create seeding routes that keep the drone over the elevation band that gives the highest growth success rates, i.e avoiding channels and/or keeping the route in the intertidal zone.
It would be awesome if we could input the ground elevation that the route should cover and then the software automatically populates the route to avoid the channels and stay within the intertidal zone elevation. It wouldn’t have to be perfectly accurate, just pretty close. The drone does not have to stay at a set height though, just avoid the areas mentioned above.
Have you heard the terrain following feature of ArduPilot?
With this, you can add mission items in the terrain frame (altitude will be above terrain level on that location). https://terrain.ardupilot.org/ already gives you terrain data with reasonable resolution.
You can put these terrain data files to an SD card (attached to FC), configure terrain-related parameters on the parameter list, and you are good to go.
I think it won’t be that hard to convert your terrain data to a form that autopilot understands.
I don’t know about this library very well, but you can start from the terrain library.
Mission Planner can create a boundary for things like the Auto WP tools from a shapefile. One approach would be to use GIS to set up polygons encompassing the correct elevation and then bring the shapefiles into MP.