Flight Movements

Air vehicles move a little differently than land vehicles. While land vehicles can move forward, backward, and sometimes side-to-side, air vehicles can do all of that and move up and down. To keep track of how a CoDrone moves in a three-dimensional space, you can use the terms below:

Roll controls the CoDrone’s horizontal, or side to side, movement. Positive roll will make the CoDrone move to the right, and negative roll will make the drone move to the left.

Pitch is the CoDrone’s forward and backward tilt. Positive pitch will make the CoDrone tilt and move forward, and negative pitch will make the CoDrone tilt and move backwards.

Yaw is the CoDrone’s left and right rotation. Positive yaw will make the CoDrone turn to the right, and negative yaw will make the CoDrone turn to the left.

Throttle controls the CoDrone’s vertical, or up and down, movement. Positive throttle will make the CoDrone fly higher, and negative throttle will make the CoDrone fly lower.

One of the best ways to learn new words is to see them in action, so instead of you just memorizing all of the flight movements, you’re going to do an obstacle course!

Have a friend sit down on a chair and then blindfold them (or just have them keep their eyes closed). Next, guide them through an obstacle course to have them sit down on another chair at the end using only flight movement words. Make sure that anything dangerous is out of their way first!

• Positive throttle: stand up
• Negative throttle: sit down
• Positive pitch: move forward
• Negative pitch: move backward
• Positive yaw: turn right
• Negative yaw: turn left
• Positive roll: move right
• Negative roll: turn left

For example, if you wanted to tell your friend to move forward, you could say, “Positive pitch 2 steps.” That would let your friend know that you want them to move forward by 2 steps. Once your friend successfully completes the obstacle course, switch roles so they can give you directions!

There are three steps to make your CoDrone fly autonomously:

1. Set movement commands
2. Send commands
3. Set movement duration

Movement commands are what you just learned about: yaw, pitch, roll, and throttle. To set their speed values in Arduino, use the following format:

CoDrone.setThrottle(0);
CoDrone.setPitch(0);
CoDrone.setRoll(0);
CoDrone.setYaw(0);

The values for these numbers can range from -100 to 100. For example, if you wanted to set throttle to 70, you would write CoDrone.setThrottle(70). This saves the throttle’s speed value as 70, but it doesn’t send the command to your CoDrone…yet.

The last thing you need to do is give your flight movements time to play out. This is how you would use it with multiple flight commands:

CoDrone.setRoll(60);
CoDrone.setPitch(-60);
CoDrone.move(1.5);

This CoDrone.move(1.5)will pause your code for 1.5 seconds after you send your flight commands. This will give your CoDrone 1.5 seconds to execute the commands before it moves on to the next line of code.

Now you get to put it all together! Have your CoDrone take off, throttle at a speed of 50 for 2 seconds, fly forward and to the left at a speed of 30 for 2 seconds, and then land. Don’t forget to include a kill switch in void loop!

Your code should look something like this:

#include <CoDrone.h>

void setup() {
    CoDrone.begin(115200);
    CoDrone.pair();

    CoDrone.takeoff();          //Take off for 3 seconds

    CoDrone.setThrottle(50);            //Throttle for 2 seconds
    CoDrone.move(2);

    CoDrone.setThrottle(0);              // Set throttle back to 0
    CoDrone.setPitch(30);
    CoDrone.setRoll(-30);                //Pitch and roll for 2 seconds
    CoDrone.move(2);

    CoDrone.land();          //Land

}

void loop () {
    byte bt8 = digitalRead(18);
    byte bt4 = digitalRead(14);
    byte bt1 = digitalRead(11);

    if(bt1 && bt4 && !bt8){
        CoDrone.emergencyStop();
    }
}

This is the pseudocode:

• Set baud rate to 115200.
• Connect to a nearby drone.
• Take off for 2 seconds.
• Throttle (fly up) at a speed of 50 for 2 seconds.
• Positive pitch (fly forward) and negative roll (fly to the left) at a speed of 30 for 2 seconds.
• Land.
• If sensors 11 and 14 are covered, stop the motors.