Flight Directions

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 moves in a three-dimensional space, you can use the terms below:

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

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

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

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

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

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 right 
• Negative yaw: turn left 
• 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 to 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 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. For example, if you have your throttle set at -78, your CoDrone will move downwards at 78% speed. In general, if you want your CoDrone to move to the right, forwards, or up, you should use positive numbers. If you want your CoDrone to move to the left, backwards, or down, you should use negative numbers.

With this block, you can also have your CoDrone 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 to move in. For example, if you want your CoDrone to move diagonally to the right, you would type in positive values for both pitch and roll while leaving throttle and yaw alone. 

One problem: once you type in your numbers, the names of the flight directions will disappear from the block! To remember the order they appear in (Roll, Pitch, Yaw, and Throttle), use the mnemonic device Robots Play Yellow Trombones.

In addition to being able to fly up, down, left, right, forward, and backward, your CoDrone can also turn left and right! The turn block in the flight commands menu can help you program your CoDrone to do this. Note: you can also use yaw in your move block! 

To use the turn() block, drag it to your workspace and select left or right from the drop-down menu. Type in the number of seconds you would like your CoDrone 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 the program below after testing out the program above to see what we mean.

Try writing a program that will have your CoDrone take off, fly forward, and then turn before landing! 

Challenge: Shapeshifter 

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

Some helpful hints: 

• A triangle’s angles add up to 180 degrees. 
• A quadrilateral’s angles add up to 360 degrees. 
• A pentagon’s angles add up to 540 degrees. 
• A hexagon’s angles add up to 720 degrees. 
• An octagon’s angles add up to 1080 degrees.