A few of us met up with Jim McAndrew of Auto Flight Logic last week for a demo of Autopilot Phantom, their new app for the Phantom 2 Vision+.

We have been waiting for a long time for someone to use the Phantom SDK to develop an app to assist normal Phantom owners, so it’s exciting to see efforts by Jim and Auto Flight Logic to provide autonomous flight tools in their new $20 app.

Most of the features we tested worked well, although the interface could use some serious Ux work to make it more friendly and usable.  Flight modes are described on the website.

“Follow” is a bit crude, but works well if you don’t need the Phantom to follow you precisely (e.g., working distance is far, and you can deal with some slop). “Intercept” and “Mimic” modes are fun; they are similar to demos we’ve seen from some other manufacturers out there, and have great potential. Performance could get better with more tuning from Auto Flight Logic, but some of it is inherent in limitations imposed by the first version of DJI’s SDK. 

Everything will get better as the SDK improves and as Auto Flight Logic revs their app over time. For now, it is worth the $20 to unlock some novel new features of the Phantom 2 Vision+. Note that you should be really careful when using the autonomous flight features of any app: fly in big, open areas, and be ready to take over if you see anything strange happen.

Romeo of Visual-Aerials reviewed Autopilot: [article] [video (below)]

[vimeo 122997261 w=600 h=338]