2B: Flight Directions

Make sure that your CoDrone Mini is paired before starting the lesson! If you forgot how to do this, make sure to review how to pair to Blockly here.

Air vehicles move a little differently than land vehicles. While land vehicles can move forward, backward, and sometimes side-to-side, air vehicles can do all of that and move up and down. To keep track of how a CoDrone Mini moves in a three-dimensional space, you can use the terms below:

Roll controls the CoDrone Mini’s horizontal, or side to side, movement. Positive roll will make the CoDrone Mini move to the right, and negative roll will make the drone move to the left.

Pitch is the CoDrone Mini’s forward and backward tilt. Positive pitch will make the CoDrone Mini tilt and move forward, and negative pitch will make the CoDrone Mini tilt and move backwards.

Yaw is the CoDrone Mini’s left and right rotation. Positive yaw will make the CoDrone Mini turn to the left, and negative yaw will make the CoDrone Mini turn to the right.

Throttle controls the CoDrone Mini’s vertical, or up and down, movement. Positive throttle will make the CoDrone Mini fly higher, and negative throttle will make the CoDrone Mini fly lower.

Be careful with yaw and roll! Yaw will make your CoDrone Mini turn left or right, while roll will move your CoDrone Mini left or right.

One of the best ways to learn new words is to see them in action, so instead of you just memorizing all of the flight movements, you’re going to do an obstacle course!

Have a friend sit down, blindfold them (or just have them keep their eyes closed), and guide them through an obstacle course to sitting down in a different chair using only flight movement words. Make sure that anything dangerous is out of their way first!

• Positive throttle: stand up
• Negative throttle: sit down
• Positive pitch: move forward
• Negative pitch: move backward
• Positive yaw: turn left
• Negative yaw: turn right
• Positive roll: move right
• Negative roll: turn left

For example, if you wanted to tell your friend to move forward, you could say, “Positive pitch 2 steps.” That would let your friend know that you want them to move forward by 2 steps. Once your friend successfully completes the obstacle course, switch roles so they can give you directions!

There is one block in Blockly that will help you program your CoDrone Mini fly in any of the flight directions! You can find the move block in the flight commands menu in Blockly.

Once you drag it to your workspace, you can fill in the number of seconds you would like your CoDrone Mini to move for.

Each flight direction has a percent symbol next to it, and that is for the power value. These values can range from -100 to 100, with 0 being no movement in that direction and -100 or 100 being full speed. From left to right, the values are: roll, pitch, yaw, and throttle. The block below sets pitch equal to -78.

“Wait, Robolink!” you say. “How can a negative number be full speed?” 

Positive numbers from 1 to 100 move your CoDrone Mini right, forward, or up. Negative numbers from -1 to 100 move your CoDrone Mini left, backwards, or down. For example, if you have your pitch set at -78, your CoDrone Mini will move backwards at 78% speed.

With this block, you can also have your CoDrone Mini move in more than one direction at a time! All you need to do is type in values for each direction you would like your CoDrone Mini to move in. For example, if you want your CoDrone Mini to move diagonally to the left, you would type in positive values for both pitch and roll while leaving throttle and yaw alone.

If you know how many seconds you would like your CoDrone Mini to turn for in addition to the speed, use the turn() block! This is more precise than using just the yaw value in the move block. Drag it to your workspace and select left or right from the drop-down menu. Type in the amount of seconds you would like your CoDrone Mini to turn for, and then type in the power value. This number can range from 0 to 100, with 0 being completely still and 100 being very fast. We recommend starting at 50 and seeing what you need to do from there.

You can also use the blocks in the aqua flight variables menu to move your drone.

These blocks work exactly the same way as the blue move block, but they’re more broken down. You can stack blocks to make your CoDrone to go in one or a couple of directions at once (like diagonally to the right), and then use the aqua move block afterwards. Try the code below to see what happens!

Warning: if you want to see distinct directions one after the other, you will need to set the previously flown direction back to 0% before adding on the new flight direction. Otherwise, your drone will keep performing that action throughout the entire program. Try this program after testing out your first to see what we mean.

Try writing a program that will have your CoDrone Mini take off, fly forward, and then turn before landing! It could look something like the code below.

Challenge: Z Formation

Have your CoDrone fly in a Z shape using all of the commands you just learned! The only rule is that you HAVE to include a kill switch.