Software Design

Autonomous Drone Flight Modes

State Diagrams · made in Skemio

State diagram showing drone modes: Pre-Flight, Manual Flight, Waypoint Nav, Return to Home, and Landing ending in Disarmed state.
State diagram showing drone modes: Pre-Flight, Manual Flight, Waypoint Nav, Return to Home, and Landing ending in Disarmed state.
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What it shows

  • Pre-arm checks block launch until GPS lock and sensor health pass.
  • Failsafe triggers automatically override manual flight on link loss.
  • Return-to-home climbs to clear obstacles before horizontal return.

The takeaway

Fail-safe state transitions must execute deterministically without operator telemetry.

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