When flying the drone I many times find myself wanting to follow a specific direction with orientation aligned with the object(s) being recorded, such as following a straight road (directly above and facing forward) or looking directly downwards and flying over rectungural shaped objects such as grass squares in parks or buildings.

In such cases I would like the drone to perfectly align itself with the recorded objects, so that the square shapes align perfectly in the frame when drones flies over them.

Without any software assistance to achieve this, the result always is that the drone starts flying more or less in the proper place, but because of slight orientation misalignment it flies to one side after some time, ruining the intended shot.


I would like to request a feature that would allow the drone to align itself with the objects it flies over. It would be nice to have vision assisted object recognition based on shapes where I could select the object (trajectory) and the drone would align itself with it continously while flying over it.

Other examples of trajectory alignment where vision assisted navigation would be very nice to have would be: narrow turning water areas (springs, rivers), narrow walking paths. It would be very nice if drone could follow the widing shapes of such targets.

It would also be nice to have the drone to align itself - position itselft centrally in front of selected target, e.g. center itself in front of the building. Buildings usually have flat fronts so 90 degrees alignment between the drone direction of view and the face of the building should be algorithmically possible.

A possible user interaction with the controller to use the feature:

1. User flies the drone manually to some height where the object is visible and directs the camera on that object.
2. Drone/controller does some sort of object / shape recognition and presents several detected shapes to the user.
3. User selects the object and enters additional parameters:
- alignment for the start of the flight, e.g. height above ground/object
- camera angle
- vertical orientation towards the object, e.g. directly above (90 degrees) or other angle
- horizontal orientation (if drone should fly slightly side ways)
4. User selects the button: go to start position
5. User selects the button: start flight - the recording start / stop could be controller separately or automatically
6. User has the option to decide the end point of the flight path during flight, in case object is too long (e.g. a road).
7. User has the option to initiate the flight in reverse direction with the same or different parameters, which effectively flies the drone back to the initial start position.

Note: The subjects recorded are always static, so it is possible to use GPS coordinates and map information to help the drone align itself. With this in mind, the live vision object recognition is not strictly necessary, but would be primarily used for smaller adjustments of the drone position.

but what with non 90 degree buildings? how do you think?

fateofangel Posted at 7-26 09:40
but what with non 90 degree buildings? how do you think?

It's not what you're looking for, but you can get a similar effect using a hyperlapse shot with waypoints.  In that mode, you'd specify the exact start and end images (including location, height, and direction the camera is pointing), and it will create a hyperlapse video from point A to point B.

Hi there. Thank you for reaching out. I will take this as a suggestion of yours and will forward it to our designated team for attention. After the evaluation of the engineers, significant suggestions or requests will be implemented via the firmware update, app update, etc. For any updates, please stay tuned to the latest news on our DJI official website at www.dji.com. Thank you for your understanding and support.