Setup positioning system

To create preprogrammed autonomous shows with indoor drones, you need to have a proper positioning system that provides absolute position information for your drones at all times. There is no best solution for positioning, all systems have both benefits and bottlenecks which we try to summarize below.

Positioning system	Main benefits	Main bottlenecks
UWB	large scalable stage space, not sensitive to light conditions, no VLOS is strictly required, cheapest	medium hard to setup, accuracy is not the best (10-20 cm), gets inaccurate close to convex hull and instable outside, hard to make it accurate on the ground
Lighthouse	good accuracy (1-2 cm), very easy to setup, relatively cheap	small stage space, VLOS is strictly required, base stations can interfere, sensitive to light conditions
Motion Capture	very good accuracy (mm scale), large stage space available	position is computed on ground and needs to be transmitted to the drone (not scalable), hard to setup, VLOS is required, sensitive to light conditions, expensive

Positioning system

Main benefits

Main bottlenecks

UWB

large scalable stage space, not sensitive to light conditions, no VLOS is strictly required, cheapest

medium hard to setup, accuracy is not the best (10-20 cm), gets inaccurate close to convex hull and instable outside, hard to make it accurate on the ground

Lighthouse

good accuracy (1-2 cm), very easy to setup, relatively cheap

small stage space, VLOS is strictly required, base stations can interfere, sensitive to light conditions

Motion Capture

very good accuracy (mm scale), large stage space available

position is computed on ground and needs to be transmitted to the drone (not scalable), hard to setup, VLOS is required, sensitive to light conditions, expensive

To setup your selected positioning system, please follow the official instructions of each system. Before switching to Skybrush, use CFClient and a single drone to double check that the coordinate systems are setup correctly and positioning is stable and accurate.