The Drone Flight Software Giving Wings to Our Product Vision
For several years, drones have been a part of my life. During undergrad, hanging out with friends usually meant shooting water rockets and flying gliders. Chasing my masters degree also did not deter me from hanging out with similar-minded individuals, those who were crazy enough to build a 160 mph drone from scratch — all for just 3 credits! When I started at PrecisionHawk soon after graduation, I was tasked to help create InFlight, a proprietary flight software for terrain survey and data collection serving multiple industries using PrecisionHawk’s Lancaster fixed wing platform. Now, the onus was on me to dress up this product before presenting it to our ever-growing client base. My exciting journey with drones began all over again.
I was not alien to product or project management in the hardware sense, but working on software development at a professional level seemed to be an entirely different ball game. My outings with flight servicing teams during the initial days would help me a great deal to define the touch and feel of the product. The initial familiarization phase revolved around getting to know the product requirements, team management and accommodating requests from various stakeholders. It was all about responding to issues that vary day-to-day. This shortsightedness pricked me with pressing questions about InFlight as a product. I was convinced that we had to build a product strategy in line with the overarching goals of the company.
The first step in putting the puzzle together was to draw up long-term goals. While I was grappling to fill this void, things took an unexpected turn. The company provided me with an opportunity to shoulder the product lifecycle of DataMapper InFlight, a smartphone/tablet-based flight software, envisioned to harness the high-resolution imaging capability of commercially available DJI quadcopters using their open SDK. Their unrivaled drone market share would deepen our market penetration. PrecisionHawk now offers the Smarter Farming Package, in partnership with DJI, for all your end-to-end data collection and analytics.
The Product Goals: With our flight software, we seek to transform drones into highly mobile, terrestrial data collection units that could be used across multiple industries from agriculture to oil and gas, from insurance to mining. We are equally passionate to serve the prosumer and consumer market, who can now take full advantage of new FAA regulations for aerial mapping with our apps. You can be an enterprise, an entity or a stand-alone user, and we will have all the answers to your aerial mapping and data processing needs.
Once DataMapper InFlight for DJI stepped into the product definition phase, we could clearly see the similarities with InFlight for Lancaster. Both were conceived to aid users in tracking and monitoring drones, while carrying out an aerial survey autonomously and collecting high-quality data. We could see a certain synergy between two aerial platforms (fixed and rotary wings) designed with different philosophies. For starters, the platforms complement each other’s data collection capabilities: quads are most suited for small and mid-ranged surveys while fixed-wings are better for larger areas of interest and support higher payload capacity. The flight parameters to be monitored (battery level, GPS health, speed, altitude etc.) remain uniform across the two. The only major difference is the dynamic effect of wind conditions on flight path generation. These overlapping goals motivated us to pursue a universal flight software that can support fixed-wings and quadcopters alike.
In the future, we plan to provide real-time local airspace information to enhance situational awareness for drones of any kind. We also aim to seamlessly provide access to our powerful data processing and analytics engine, DataMapper, from within the app. To summarize:
The Product Vision: Move toward a one-stop solution to all autonomous aerial imagery data collection needs and instant cloud access with effortless integration of third party aerial platforms (assuming full SDK/flight control access) to serve multiple industries and entities.
The Product Initiatives: Smartphones and tablets have completely revolutionized the tech industry with powerful yet easy-to-use apps. This meteoric rise has inspired us to pivot towards “mobile only,” putting the power of drones in your hand.
To tie the loose ends of our product roadmap, it was imperative to examine competing drone flight software. A SWOT analysis on the existing flight software in the market revealed many hiccups in the UI flow, which has greatly influenced our product thinking. The philosophy of Unparalleled User Experience is driving our product strategy. Inspired by the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!) principle, we are keen on optimizing the user flow by weeding out unnecessary hops while reaching the take-off state. We are sitting through timely design iterations to re-theme the app for superior experience based on the flight tests and valuable user feedback. We have prioritized the flight-planning interface, keeping in mind the users, who come from little or no UAV background.
These exercises essentially established a philosophy of “Users First” while deliberating on new features and improvements to the software. We will stay true to our philosophy as more challenging and crucial product modules enter the development phase. We also greatly look forward to engaging with users for feedback to prioritize our unique offering.
DataMapper is a division of PrecisionHawk, a North Carolina-based terrestrial data acquisition and analysis company. Read more at www.datamapper.com. DataMapper InFlight supports the Matrice 600, Matrice 100, DJI Phantom 4, Phantom 3 Advanced/Professional and Inspire 1/Pro. Download it now on Google Play and the App Store.
