What was accomplished

●       A dedicated mapping mission mode was added to the flight software so the aircraft could traverse the search area using straight survey lines instead of only point-to-point mission movement.

●       The mapping route logic was first exercised in ArduPilot SITL, allowing the team to observe the simulated aircraft path in Mission Planner while controlling the mission from the web application.

●       Simulation testing confirmed that the new mapping behavior could run through the command pipeline while the web application continued to display mission status and flight progress.

Challenges and solutions

The main challenge was making the mapping motion predictable while keeping the mission interface synchronized with ArduPilot. SITL testing was used to refine the straight-line mission sequence before the mapping behavior was used with real flight data.

Media

Straight-line mapping mission validation in SITL, with Mission Planner and the custom web application running together.

Next steps plan

Build the image-processing side of the mapping system by extracting frames from aerial video and stitching them into a single map.