I have searched the forum but I have not been able to find anything (maybe I am not searching for the right thing?). We are using mission planner to plan spraying routes for a multicopter carrying a liquid tank. Of particular interest, we are trying to spray only certain areas in the field.
Currently, we are uploading a shape file to define an area to be sprayed, and then using the polygon feature in mission planner to generate a grid that the vehicle will fly. The problem that I am having is that I can’t seem to find a way to plan a mission with more than one polygon/survey grid. Said another way, I am looking to generate a mission with several independent polygons with independent survey grids associated with each polygon.
For example, we have several areas in the field that need to be sprayed. The copter can carry enough payload to spray all the areas. We will plan individual missions for each target area, and then manually upload them to the copter while in flight. It would be nice to be able to use the survey grid tool to generate multiple polygons for each target area in a single mission. Another work around I have tried is to manually draw grid lines over the target areas, however this is not as precise as using the survey grid method.
I hope this makes sense, hopefully someone here has done something similar. I can upload some screenshots later to give a clearer sense of what I am hoping to accomplish.
Brian,
I am not aware of any way to plan surveys in different polygons with the survey grid tool. What I would suggest is to plan a survey grid in each area separately and save the mission to a file. Do this for each area and then manually combine the files using a text editor. You can then load that file into mission planner. You might have to make some adjustments but the bulk of it would be there.
Bill
Bill, thanks for your input. I hadn’t thought about combining the files like you say, I will give that a shot. I think that the multiple polygon feature would be useful to have, especially for spraying applications. I wonder how difficult it would be to add such a feature?
It is already there, first you make a flight plan for every polygon and then you right click the ‘Flight Plan’ screen, ‘File Load/Save’ → ‘Load and Append’
But how to plan a mission with obstacles inside the field? The polygon is only the outer contour of the field. and inside the field there may be ponds, trees, etc.