“Hello, Drone!”#

The Hello Drone Flight mission is a simple Air SDK Flight mission explaining how to:

Use Flight supervisor default state machine
Write a Guidance mode with a trajectory generation for cameras
Send and receive messages between Flight mission and Mission UI
Create a native service to access Video and Telemetry

When the Hello Drone Flight mission is activated, the drone will “say” Hello moving its head.

The code is available here.

Hello Flight supervisor state machine#

The Flight mission’s code for Flight supervisor is available here.

This code defines the states and transitions (see how to modify the state machine). It uses Default mission takeoff, hovering, landing and critical stages and creates specific ground and flying stages.

Two Transitions in the state machine are defined to switch from idle or say states of ground stage.

Hello Guidance mode#

The Flight mission’s code for Guidance is available here.

This code defines the Guidance specific HelloGroundMode in Python (see how to write a mode).

In this mode, the orientation of the front camera performs the Hello animation. A message count is sent to Flight supervisor counting the number of times the front camera has performed the Hello animation.

Hello Service#

The Flight mission’s code for the Service is available here.

The Service computes the mean depth from the depth map video feed of the stereo camera. It demonstrates how to define a telemetry consumer and producer. And it demonstrates how to instantiate a client video feed.

Security setup#

The generated archive needs to be signed to be installed on the drone (simulated or real) The method and key to use is specified in the mission.yaml file. The signature configuration item has the following schema:

$ type: object
  properties:
    type: string
    path: string
    key_id: string
  required:
    - type

<type> can be local or aws-kms (https://aws.amazon.com/kms/)
<path> is the path to the private key (absolute or relative to the mission directory) for the local signature type.
<key_id> the id of the key for aws-kms signature type.

Security setup of a real drone#

First, make sure that the public key from the pair of keys used to sign your missions has been provided to the drone secure element (this has only to be done once).

To generate the pair of keys see Generate a key pair.

To add the generated public key see Add a key to the Secure Element.

If you choose to use a local key, edit your mission.yaml file to add a “signature” section of type “local” and specify the path of your .pem key file there. Relative paths are resolved from your mission root directory.

$ signature:
    type: local
    path: <path>/<to>/<your>/<keystore>/fm-provider-private-key.pem

Security setup of a simulated drone#

The simulated drone already contains a default known public key whose private key is bundled with airsdk command line utility.

airsdk build --simulator already use it by default.

Important

This private key shall not be used for a real drone, only for testing with a simulated drone.

Build the Hello Drone Flight mission#

From the previously created workspace, type the following commands.

For a simulated drone:

$ airsdk build --simulator

The output signed archive is generated in the workspace .airsdk build directory, this mission archive can be installed with the airsdk install command that is introduced in the next section.

$ ls -al ./.airsdk/out/hello-pc/images/com.parrot.missions.samples.hello.tar.gz

For a real drone:

$ airsdk build

Likewise, the output signed archive is generated in the workspace .airsdk build directory:

$ ls -al ./.airsdk/out/hello-classic/images/com.parrot.missions.samples.hello.tar.gz

Note

You can run airsdk build --help to learn more about the building options

Install the Hello Drone Flight mission#

Type the following commands.

For a simulated drone:

$ airsdk install --simulator

For a real drone:

$ airsdk install

Once the drone has restarted, the mission will be available.