Waypoints aren't very precise

[Bad Santa]

I have been playing with waypoints.
One of the things I was trying to do was to navigate within a 20' circle between two trees.
To do this, I set 4 way points. Two in front of the tree line to line it up. One in the middle of the tree line, and one about a dozen feet after the tree line.
What I found out is the drone could be more than 10 feet off in any direction. One of the runs the drone was almost 30 feet off the ground and another found ground interference.
There were zero successful missions despite me setting this up 5 times.

I also had a situation where one of the points was over 40 feet from an obstacle but when I ran the mission it came up with interference on that obstacle. The drone came to a dead stop since it was so close to the obstacle.

Is this normal for waypoint missions or is there something I should be doing to hone it down more?

 

[AeroJ]

Are you familiar with Bezier curves and B-splines ? 'Cos that's what way points are doing. They take the straight lines between positions you input at the planning stage, and transform them into B--spline control points , generating a smooth curved line that averages / interpolates between the start, mid and end points it has been given.

The way to get better precision and therefore minimise this effect is to plot more points, closer together, or to actually edit the interpolated spline path to make the travel more linear, which I think I have read is possible in one of the path edit screens ?

 

[Bad Santa]

Are you familiar with Bezier curves and B-splines ? 'Cos that's what way points are doing. They take the straight lines between positions you input at the planning stage, and transform them into B--spline control points , generating a smooth curved line that averages / interpolates between the start, mid and end points it has been given.

The way to get better precision and therefore minimise this effect is to plot more points, closer together, or to actually edit the interpolated spline path to make the travel more linear, which I think I have read is possible in one of the path edit screens ?

Yes, that's what I did to go between the trees.
I stopped exactly in front of the opening and set a waypoint. Then moved forward a few feet and set another. Then directly between them and set another and then a dozen feet past and set another.
At the first of those four waypoints, it gave interference.

 

[jaja6009]

I have had much greater success with waypoints. I am not sure what your issue is.

How many satellites do you have and do the trees or other buildings make the count drop?

One time I made a repeating video progression using waypoints and it came out decent enough with the video being reasonably consistent and lining up and this was with a non-RTK drone.

We all know that non-RTK drones use non-corrected GNSS and the accuracy and precision on this can be measured in meters.

Maybe try in a different area that is more wide open and look at your results.

 

[GadgetGuy]

I have been playing with waypoints.
One of the things I was trying to do was to navigate within a 20' circle between two trees.
To do this, I set 4 way points. Two in front of the tree line to line it up. One in the middle of the tree line, and one about a dozen feet after the tree line.
What I found out is the drone could be more than 10 feet off in any direction. One of the runs the drone was almost 30 feet off the ground and another found ground interference.
There were zero successful missions despite me setting this up 5 times.

I also had a situation where one of the points was over 40 feet from an obstacle but when I ran the mission it came up with interference on that obstacle. The drone came to a dead stop since it was so close to the obstacle.

Is this normal for waypoint missions or is there something I should be doing to hone it down more?

If you are able to turn off Obstacle Avoidance during Waypoint Missions, when navigating tight spaces you may need to turn it off, as OA is notorious for preventing flying in tight spaces. Once you have done so, you will need to carefully monitor your Waypoint Flight to abort it manually, if it is flying too close to a tree it is supposed to fly by, rather than into. Try setting the flight speed as slow as possible to give yourself plenty of time to react, and then speed it up after you have vetted the mission slowly.

Also, not sure if you are creating this mission on a map, or by manually flying the route to create it. Flying the mission manually and setting waypoints strategically will always result in a more accurate mission replication of the original flight.

 

[BossBob]

You are right on the edge of the accuracy of civilian gps which under ideal conditions is 10 to 16 ft and can be as much as 33 ft when buildings and trees come into play. This explains things. How Accurate Is GPS - September 15, 2025
Our drones manage to hold position so well with the help of the downward cameras you’d experience if you were to try hovering over small waves breaking on a beach. The drone will often move backwards and forwards following the breaking waves.