Waypoint radius and acceptance in Drone Programming - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Waypoint Radius and Acceptance

📖 Scenario: You are programming a drone to follow a set of waypoints during a flight mission. Each waypoint has a position, and the drone should consider the waypoint reached when it is within a certain radius of that point. This radius is called the acceptance radius.Setting the right acceptance radius helps the drone fly smoothly without needing to hit the exact point, which can be difficult due to wind or GPS accuracy.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple program that checks if the drone has reached each waypoint based on the acceptance radius. You will create a list of waypoints, set an acceptance radius, write the logic to check if the drone is close enough to each waypoint, and then print which waypoints are reached.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of waypoints with exact coordinates

Set an acceptance radius variable

Write a loop to check distance from drone position to each waypoint

Print the list of waypoints that are within the acceptance radius

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Drones use waypoint radius and acceptance to fly smoothly and safely by not needing to hit exact points, which helps in real missions with GPS errors or wind.

💼 Career

Understanding waypoint acceptance is important for drone programmers, robotics engineers, and anyone working with autonomous vehicles or navigation systems.

1

Create the list of waypoints

Create a list called waypoints with these exact tuples representing coordinates: (10, 10), (20, 20), (30, 30).

Drone Programming

# Create the list of waypoints
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with tuples for each waypoint coordinate.

2

Set the acceptance radius

Create a variable called acceptance_radius and set it to 8.

Drone Programming

waypoints = [(10, 10), (20, 20), (30, 30)]
# Set the acceptance radius
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a simple number variable for the radius.

3

Check which waypoints are reached

Create a list called reached_waypoints. Use a for loop with variables wp_x and wp_y to iterate over waypoints. Inside the loop, calculate the distance from the drone position (15, 15) to the waypoint using the formula distance = ((wp_x - 15)**2 + (wp_y - 15)**2)**0.5. If the distance is less than or equal to acceptance_radius, add the waypoint tuple to reached_waypoints.

Drone Programming

waypoints = [(10, 10), (20, 20), (30, 30)]
acceptance_radius = 8
# Create reached_waypoints list and check each waypoint
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the distance formula and an if statement inside the loop.

4

Print the reached waypoints

Write a print statement to display the reached_waypoints list.

Drone Programming

waypoints = [(10, 10), (20, 20), (30, 30)]
acceptance_radius = 8
reached_waypoints = []
for wp_x, wp_y in waypoints:
    distance = ((wp_x - 15)**2 + (wp_y - 15)**2)**0.5
    if distance <= acceptance_radius:
        reached_waypoints.append((wp_x, wp_y))
# Print the reached_waypoints list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(reached_waypoints) to show the result.