With the GPS-only-based return-to-home feature, the drone will return to a small area, +/- maybe 2-5 feet. If an “H” pad is used, along with a downward pointed camera, it could be used to help the drone land within inches and at the center of the pad. This would come in handy if launching on a pier or in a location that would be a “game over” situation if the drone misses its home point of origin by a few feet. As I understand the GPS accuracy at the end of the flight is better than at the beginning when a minimum number of GPS satellites are discovered, which I suspect may be the reason that the point of launch doesn’t more accurately equate to the point of return, even though the GPS target is the same.
Not sure which bird you are using, but the precision RTH works fine on my Mavic Pro with LItchi.
GPS is accurate to with a couple of meters.
Be prepared in thr last part of the glight to intervene and land by hand.
If you have any concern push the flight pause button, in effect a tap on the RTH button for the DJI drones I have. That halts progress, then you can take over, or just take over with thd sticks anyway. Better to do it sooner rather than later.
DJI does not support Precision Landing on all of their drones.
Not supported are: Spark, MM & MM2
It could be added in the software of Litchi. That would be a feature request I suppose.
As a software developer (who has worked with image recognition) I am thinking of:
- Hover after lift of.
- Select region to recognize for landing
- Extract features (contours, size when 1.2 (of 0.5m) hovering above it.
And upon landing:
- Orient device in same compass angle as it took of with.
- Start matching the pretrained area of interest.
- Take the best match found and have matches (in case of multiple) have more weight when in the center of the camera screen (only if GPS is accurcate enough of course, nog 40m away from target).
- Steer towards the center of the best matching area of interest while landing.
In addition one may pre train fotos of the landing spot in different environments with different lighting and backgrounds.
Of perhaps the most minimal implementation:
Have a helipad with outstanding color, like bright orange (which nature does not show often in spots where drones can take of from), and steer towards the center of the color that comes closest while landing. In addition OCR algorithms could be used to find an “H” in the center of that brightly colored blob to add confidence it is a landing spot indeed.
It’s already been done. Have you read the drone manual?
Dji spark supports precision landing
I read on the DJI forum that the DJI Mini 2 does not have precision landing.
Best landing pad colors / shape to be recognized by the mini ? | DJI FORUM.
This forum is not for dji mini 2. Other Drones dji mavic pro, mavic air, etc. Have precision landing
If i want to get that close with my mini 2 I finish of landing manually, normally within a couple of inches of the center of the pad
If you want to add this feature for mini 2. You need to create another thread about it. But litchi are not obligated to fix dji’s work with their application.
I’m sorry for the confusion. I thought it was a general topic about precision landing. I was just brainstorming and enthusiastic I guess. I would find it fun to build such feature. In no way I meant Litchi should have had this feature already nor that Litchi would be obligated to implement it.
DJI already has this feature. It works exactly as you described.
You need to know that litchi can’t control dji’s landing