Design on Landing Pad

[Gary Rowe]

Using a large piece of plywood to take off and land on. My yard is very dry and dusty at this time. My question , is there any particular pattern or colors that I should use to help the Drones landing system land in the right spot. From working with lenses on office equipment for many years I know some seen certain colors better than others.

 

[Bobby Brown]

Here’s a standard landing pad

 

[Gary Rowe]

Here’s a standard landing pad

Does the Drone get confused if its not pointed north??

 

[Urban mayhem]

No. It doesn't matter which way its pointing.

 

[Asho]

I made a landing pad out of heavy vinyl with lead weights around the edge, see blue tape, & a cross for contrast. Easy to carry in the bush & stow.

 

[53-63-6f-74-74]

A simple "X" is all that's really needed. I've been using a small square piece of white hardboard wall panel, with a black duct tape "X" on it. I'm using the same for photogrammetry targets. A 4'x8' sheet is only about $12. A 2' square is heavy enough to stay put without securing it to the ground and you can cut it by scoring with a utility knife.

 

[Photo Beaty]

I use a piece of carpet with an X in the middle. The X is made with heavy duty 2 inch wide tape. Before that I used a piece of plywood but got tired of moving it from my vehicle to a good launching point. I still do not try hand catching/launching.

 

[gerrymad]

I think I remember some guys on this forum using the bottom of their car's floor mats and just putting a big x on it.

 

[Chilly Water]

I spray painted black cross hairs on a 2x2 piece of drywall and haven’t had any issues with landing. I find it easier to spot from the air when night flying as well.

 

[bushie]

I just use the mat from the footwell of the car. It is black so contfasts with most backgrounds here.

 

[radman]

There are a couple of videos that hint that the pattern recognition software used by DJI is based on a system of adjacent triangles with distinctive features at the vertices of the triangles. So I found an old scrap of plastic countertop material and used 2-inch wide contrasting tape to make an arrow shape in the middle surrounded by three dots of tape at unequal distances, which would form the vertices of unique triangles. I placed the drone above the arrow and made small circles around the feet, so I could accurately measure the difference between landing and takeoff positions.

Then I made about 3 dozen Return to Home and Precision Landings to compare my homemade landing pad to a commercial landing pad with a symmetric pattern. I believe that the Precision Landing software takes photos at several heights using the Vision Positioning System cameras on the bottom of the drone. So during takeoff I slowly ascended to a height of 50 feet before flying away.

The results were interesting. The least accurate Precision Landings were made with the landing pads on a parking lot, followed by landings on the sidewalk in front of my house. But the most accurate landings were made with my homemade landing pad placed on a 5 foot square of paving stones beside a shed in my back yard. The most accurate Precision Landing was about 1 inch away from the takeoff position using an Autel Evo.

The pattern on the landing pad may not be as important as the surroundings. The visual Positioning System probably uses the wide angle camera lenses and the pattern recognition algorithms that relies on easily recognized features. From an altitude of 30 to 50 feet the landing pad image may look like a dot. A uniform parking lot dosn’t have a lot of distinctive features, and the Precision Landings were the least accurate. The paving stones next to the shed between two trees had the most easily recognized features and gave the most accurate Precision Landings.

 

[DanMan32]

My first view of precision landing was a video of someone having drawn a circle with a big X in it in chalk on the street. Video looked like a Space-X video of their reusable 1st stage rocket landing back home.
That might have been a Phantom 4.