Setting geofence boundaries in Drone Programming - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Setting Geofence Boundaries

📖 Scenario: You are programming a drone to fly safely within a specific area. To keep the drone from flying too far, you need to set up geofence boundaries. These boundaries tell the drone where it can and cannot go.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that defines a geofence area using coordinates, sets a maximum allowed distance from the center, checks if a given drone position is inside the geofence, and prints the result.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called geofence_center with keys 'latitude' and 'longitude' and exact values 37.7749 and -122.4194

Create a variable called max_distance_km and set it to 5

Write a function called is_inside_geofence that takes lat and lon and returns true if the distance from geofence_center is less than or equal to max_distance_km, otherwise false

Print the result of is_inside_geofence(37.7790, -122.4183)

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Drones need geofence boundaries to avoid flying into restricted or dangerous areas, ensuring safety and compliance with regulations.

💼 Career

Understanding how to set and check geofence boundaries is important for drone software developers, UAV operators, and anyone working with autonomous flying devices.

1

Create the geofence center coordinates

Create a dictionary called geofence_center with the keys 'latitude' set to 37.7749 and 'longitude' set to -122.4194.

Drone Programming

# Create the geofence_center dictionary with latitude and longitude
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with the exact keys and values.

2

Set the maximum allowed distance

Create a variable called max_distance_km and set it to the number 5.

Drone Programming

geofence_center = {'latitude': 37.7749, 'longitude': -122.4194}
# Create max_distance_km variable and set it to 5
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 5 to the variable max_distance_km.

3

Write the function to check if inside geofence

Write a function called is_inside_geofence that takes two parameters: lat and lon. Inside the function, calculate the distance from geofence_center using the formula for distance between two points on Earth (use a simple approximation: 1 degree latitude or longitude equals 111 km). Return true if the distance is less than or equal to max_distance_km, otherwise return false.

Drone Programming

geofence_center = {'latitude': 37.7749, 'longitude': -122.4194}
max_distance_km = 5
# Define is_inside_geofence(lat, lon) function
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Calculate the difference in latitude and longitude, convert to kilometers by multiplying by 111, then use the Pythagorean theorem to find the distance.

4

Print the geofence check result

Print the result of calling is_inside_geofence(37.7790, -122.4183).

Drone Programming

geofence_center = {'latitude': 37.7749, 'longitude': -122.4194}
max_distance_km = 5

def is_inside_geofence(lat, lon):
    lat_diff = lat - geofence_center['latitude']
    lon_diff = lon - geofence_center['longitude']
    distance = ((lat_diff * 111) ** 2 + (lon_diff * 111) ** 2) ** 0.5
    return distance <= max_distance_km

# Print the result of is_inside_geofence(37.7790, -122.4183)
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print() to show the result of the function call.