Kittyhawk adds automated multi-waypoint flights to its drone-control software

All-in-one drone management app Kittyhawk has added yet another feature: multi-waypoint automated flights. This is an essential feature for lots of commercial drone applications and testing, and the fewer apps and platforms you need to accomplish a task, the better.

Kittyhawk (not to be confused with Larry Page and Sebastian Thrun’s Kitty Hawk) is an app that puts many of the most frequently needed drone-related services in one place: pre-flight checklists, airspace maps, hyperlocal weather, flight planning, live secure video, and now, direct flight automation via waypoints.

It’s pretty straightforward: just set your home location, then start picking coordinates, altitudes, and attitudes — as well as some aesthetic choices like whether you want the drone to round off its turns or follow them down to inch.

In a helpful touch that may prevent some embarrassing flight failures, the system won’t let you set waypoints outside the range of the drone or the control radio. So no accidentally fat-fingering a flight path that takes your Phantom a couple thousand miles off course.

There are plenty of options out there for the many new commercial and semi-pro drone operations popping up all over the place, but it never hurts to add more capabilities or gather them into one handy app. The new features should arrive soon, but the company didn’t provide a date.