There is a common misconception that indoor drones are just a less robust version of outdoor drones but in reality, indoor drones are specifically designed to face a different set of challenges.
Plus, ask any indoor drone racer and they will be bursting to tell you about the responsiveness, agility and adrenaline of flying indoor drones. If you’re looking for indoor drone recommendations, check out my article on the best indoor drones for battles, photography and DIY.
Indoor drones aren’t just for kids on rainy days or drone racing competitions, they’re also used commercially in warehouses and buildings. For more on the commercial use of drones check out the articles on drone solutions for business.
In this article I go through what you need to know about indoor drones before buying such as alternative positioning systems, low-light photography and indoor drone regulations.
Outdoor v Indoor Drones
Some of the features that make indoor drones different to UAVs designed for outdoor use are :
- Fixed propeller guards or caged design
- Mechanically designed to tolerate and recover in-flight from collisions
- No GPS
- No obstacle avoidance
- Optimized for photography in low light
- Smaller overall size designed for fitting through small spaces
- Lighter, more responsive design because they don’t have to be optimized for full wind resistance.
Above left: Elios 2 commercial indoor drone.
Above right: Kids indoor UFO drone.
Indoor Drone Positioning Systems
Since GPS doesn’t work inside buildings or underground, indoor drones rely on other signals for navigation and remote sensing such as:
- Infrared
- Acoustic (sound waves)
- Wifi
- Bluetooth
- UWB Ultra-wide band (high precision)
- Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS; proximity based)
- Optical sensing
Some of these methods require a two way system or tags which pickup signals from the drone, while others like infrared, are naturally occurring and can be used without any set up.
Elios 2 is a commercial drone that is designed for indoor mapping and photography. This drone uses a mix of infrared (IR) and optical sensing. Infrared is a certain frequency on the electromagnetic spectrum that’s outside of the range visible to our eyes. You might have heard of thermal infrared which is a certain frequency range within the IR spectrum.
Can I fly an indoor drone outside?
Yes, indoor drones can be flown outside but they will be susceptible to being blown around by the wind due to their light frames.
Can I fly an outdoor drone inside?
Yes, outdoor drones can be flown indoors but you need to take several steps to prevent loosing control because obstacle avoidance and GPS aren’t designed for indoor use.
One of the main annoyance of flying an outdoor drone inside is the noise level, generally the larger the drone the louder.
How to fly a drone indoors without crashing:
These settings are common to most drones but the specific terms are from the DJI Fly Ap.
- Turn off obstacle avoidance. There are too many surfaces and tight areas when flying a drone indoors which can cause the drone to stay in one place rather than following your manual control.
- De-activate return home. Return home is useful outdoors but when flying indoors the, if the drone loses connection with the controller it will fly straight into a wall. There are too many obstacles and no GPS signal to correctly rely on Return Home even if flying in a big indoor space.
- Adjust the sensitivity of the controller. Increase the sensitivity of the braking system and decrease the sensitivity of the pitch (up down) and yaw (left-right movement). We want to minimize small sudden movements and have high responsiveness when braking. (For more gradual movement, slower smoother panning if that’s when you want)
- Turn on visual warning system with Radar Chart. This is useful to prevent crashing because we have obstacle avoidance turned off.
- Turn on visual positioning if you want to maintain a set altitude. This is useful for real estate videography where we want to create a smooth continuous recording as the drone flies through the house. However, the altitude or height is measured from any surface the drone detects underneath. If the flight path goes over tables or benches it will cause the drone to shoot up to the set height measured from the table top, which will propel the drone into the ceiling. If your flying over surfaces other than the ground, leave this setting off.
Access the visual navigation settings such as the Radar Chart in the DJI Fly Ap.
Can you fly a DJI drone indoors?
Yes, DJI drones can be flown indoors if you follow the 5 steps for flying a drone indoors without crashing. DJI has recently released their first drone that has been optimized for flying indoors; the DJI Avatar.
The DJI Avatar is ideal for flying indoors because:
- It has a robust build with fixed propeller guards (check in manual)
- The controls are highly responsive and low latency
- Small size and agile , able to move easily around in small spaces and people.
- Downward sensors helpful for maintaining a set height indoors
- 1/1/7” sensor; Good for low level lighting indoors
- Less noisy than full size drones
DJI Avatar can also be flown outdoors, for the full review checkout the best indoor drones.
Indoor Drone Photography
Indoor drone photography can be challenging because drone cameras have less settings to optimize for low light compared to standard cameras.
1. Prepare the space for indoor drone photography
Before you get started, make sure the room is set up for optimal brightness, choose a time of day where you have plenty of indirect light from windows. Direct sunlight can cause glare and too much reflection. Add additional lights to the space if possible, directing the light toward the wall will help diffuse the light around the room.
2. Aperture settings for drone cameras
One of the brightness controls used on normal cameras is the aperture, this controls the amount of light that’s let in for the shot. On normal cameras, the aperture can be opened up to let more light in for low light indoor photography.
Drone cameras usually have a fixed aperture, a couple of exceptions are the Mavic 2 and the Mavic 3 which have aperture settings f/2.8 and f/11.
Aperture is measured in F stops. The lower the number, the more light is let in so with the Mavic 2 or 3 we would use f/2.8 to let more light in when taking photos indoors and f/11 when outdoor to stop a photo from becoming too bright.
3. ISO Settings for indoor drone photography
If the drone doesn’t have an adjustable aperture or the aperture is already set as wide as possible and the image is still too dark, the next step is raising the ISO setting. ISO is a setting that controls how sensitive your camera sensor is to processing light. The lens becomes more sensitive with higher settings producing a brighter photo.
However, as the ISO is increased it also introduces graininess.
Post production software can be used to fix this with a noise reduction filter. Common image editing software that can do this are Photoshop and Light Room but you can also use free software such as Gimp with a third party filter such as Google Nik, which is very effective.
The noise reduction filter in Google Nik looks at a couple of low contrast areas in the photo where the color should be relatively flat then automatically smooths the graininess for the whole image.
4. Increase shutter speed
ISO and aperture are two of the three pillars of photography, the third is shutter speed.
Not all drones will have adjustable shutter speed. The Mavic 3 has adjustable shutter speed when shooting in pro mode.
Having a fast shutter speed means you’ll have less blur from moving objects. The shutter speed should be set according to the lens size.
5. White balance
The white balance setting is helpful when the photo looks like it has a colored tint or overlay. This is because cameras don’t adjust to the visible color temperature as well as our eyes and brain.
Visually correct the white balance until the color that you see on the drone controller or phone app closely represents the way the colors look to your natural eye.
5. Use raw file format
Lastly, shooting in raw file format can be a huge advantage with indoor drone photography. It can be really difficult to tell if color and exposure are correct when viewing the image on a phone or the controller screen and make the necessary adjustments while you’re at the location. Raw file format stores more pixel information which comes in handy for post processing when we view the photos on a larger screen.
Auto-exposure bracketing is also a handy feature; more on that in drone photography.
What regulations do I have to follow when flying a drone indoors?
When flying a drone indoors, the regulations are specific to the owners of the private space for example the HSE department of a commercial warehouse. If you are flying a drone in a private space such as someone’s home, you must have the owner’s permission.
The regulations set by the FAA are not applicable to flying drones indoors because indoor spaces are not included in the National Airspace System.
Indoor Drone Racing
Indoor drone racing involves wearing a FPV headset in an arena set up with a path or obstacle course specifically designed for drones. The competition can also be a spectator sport where onlookers view the live stream footage from a selected drone so they can see what the drone pilot can see.
Indoor Drone Security Camera
Surveillance drones are now being designed for indoor use to fly around the house when the owners are out. Ring Always Home Cam sits in an enclosed docking station and deploys when motion sensors are triggered through out the house.
The Ring indoor security drone can also be deployed by an app if you’ve left the house but want to check the stove has been turned off or the doors are closed.
Read more on UAVs for indoor security in this article on surveillance drones.
Indoor Commercial Drones
A good example of an industry leading commercial indoor drone is Elios 2 by Flyabity. This drone is designed to recover after collisions, being flipped upside down, and maintain its position when flying through tunnels with-out any GPS assistance.
Indoor drones like Elios are designed to investigate extreme confined locations with like underground caves , mines and uranium plants.
Elios has a camera that rotates upward to inspect overhead beams or ceilings and, unlike outdoor drones, the LED lights have an oblique angle rather than parallel to the camera. This is specifically designed to illuminate the view in spite of indoor dust or particles in low light environments which can be reflective and degrade the quality of the image.
Indoor Drone Mapping
Outdoor drone mapping is widely used across many industries but indoor mapping is not as well known because of challenges from the lack of GPS.
However, there is demand for indoor mapping applications with drones for a number of reasons:
- Manual indoor mapping is prone to human error and inconsistency.
- Manual indoor mapping and surveying takes longer for a human to physically measure the size of a room.
- Engineers and building inspectors often have to put themselves in dangerous situations such as high rise buildings in the construction phase.
- Compared to ground based robotics, drones have the advantage of being in unrestricted airspace i.e. they are not impacted by rough terrain in underground mines or tight doorways and openings.
Above: 3D Model of an underground mine produced with Elios 3 (Image credit Flyability)
How do drones produce indoor maps?
Indoor drones use remote sensing and measuring methods such as LiDAR, acoustic, optical, wifi and bluetooth to produce indoor maps.
One way that drones can produce indoor maps is by a combination of LiDAR (light detection and ranging) and SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping).
LiDAR is an optical method that determines distances with a laser. The laser emits a pulse of light and measures the time taken to reflect back to the sensor.
SLAM is the technology that makes mapping from a moving device possible without GPS. SLAM technology is used across many industries and has been around since the 1980s. SLAM maps an area while recording the location of the device (the drone) within the mapped space.
There are several methods within SLAM LiDAR but one of the simplest is the wall following algorithm. The sensor scans the area to the left of the drone, finds a wall & travels at a set distance. The drones position in respect to it’s surroundings is calculated by using the difference in the laser scanner locations.
SLAM can also be used with visual data alone rather than LiDAR, but LiDAR is recommended for drones.
For more detailed information on using SLAM with LiDAR, check out this article by COEX.
Wrap Up On Indoor Drones
Flying drones indoors has many unique challenges compared to outdoors but can be just as fun for hobbyists and just as rewarding for indoor commercial jobs.
For more, check out this article on my recommended indoor drones.
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The Best Indoor Drones for Battles, Photography and DIY
The 101 On Thermal Drones
The Pros of Drones to the Environment, Society and Industry