Sites and no-fly zones
Tell Zequent where your drones must never fly, and where each location of yours begins and ends. The platform then plans every flight around your no-fly zones, and answers an alarm at a site with that site's own devices.
Before you begin
- A console account with the operator or organization administrator role.
- At least one aircraft, real or simulated, so the map has somewhere to start.
Draw a no-fly zone
Switch to Zone mode
Open Operate›Remote Control and select an aircraft. The map moves to it. At the top of the map, switch from Cursor to Zone.
Click the corners
Click at least three points around the area. The bar at the top shows how many points you have, the area and its perimeter. Undo removes the last point.
Select Finish.
Name it
Give the zone a name your operators recognize, for example School grounds. They see it on the map, and in the message when a flight is refused because of it. Select Save zone.
The zone is in force right away, for every flight of your organization: from Skills, schedules, event triggers and Remote Control alike.
Choose how strict it is
Select Plan at the bottom of the map. The Zones list holds every zone of your organization.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Block | The default. Never flown through: the platform flies a detour around it. A flight is refused only when there is no way around, for example when the target lies inside the zone. |
| Approval | A flight that crosses the zone waits until a person approves it. If it's rejected, the run takes its failure branch. |
| Advisory | Flown through as commanded. The run records a warning. |
| From height and Up to height | Restrict only a band of heights, in metres above the takeoff point. Leave them empty for from the ground and no ceiling. |
| Active | Switch it off to keep a zone without enforcing it, for example outside event days. The map shows it grey. |
Edit moves the zone's corners; × deletes it.
What your operators see
- A run flies around a blocking zone on its own. When a flight is refused, the step fails with the zone's name, and the run takes its failure branch.
- A fly-to in Remote Control is checked before it is sent. The operator sees the detour, the approval needed or the warning, and confirms. An organization administrator can also override a zone for a single fly-to; the override is recorded.
- Manual control is never blocked. Close to a zone the map shows the distance; inside one it shows Restricted airspace, pulses red and sounds an alarm.
- Returning home always happens, including on low battery: the platform flies the detour if there is one, and never leaves an aircraft hovering.
How detours, heights and safe returns work in detail: No-fly zones and safe returns.
Use sites
A site is one of your locations, for example a plant, an airfield or a campus, with its area drawn on the map. Sites can lie inside each other, like buildings on a campus. Your platform administrator sets them up; you find them under Manage›Fleet Setup›Theatres.
Station your devices at their site
As an organization administrator, open the device on Manage›Operations›Assets and choose its site under Theatre.
Keep alarms local
In an event trigger, set Only inside site to the site. The trigger then fires only for events inside the site's area, and the run belongs to that site: its own devices answer first. A site without an area drawn yet starts nothing.
A no-fly zone applies to every flight of your organization, even when it is filed under a site.
Troubleshooting
- A run fails with a no-fly zone in the message. The target lies inside a blocking zone, or there is no way around it. Move the target, change the zone to Approval or Advisory, or switch it off.
- A run waits and nothing moves. A flight crosses an Approval zone and waits for a person. Approve it in the console.
- A drone took a long way round. That is the detour around a blocking zone. It keeps a safety margin of 20 m from the zone by default.
- An event trigger with a site never fires. The site has no area yet, or the event happened outside it.