Enhanced Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Flight Along Computed Splines

A computing apparatus comprising:

• one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media;
• and
• program instructions stored on the one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media that, when executed by one or more processors, direct a flight control subsystem of an unmanned aerial vehicle to at least:
• define one or more keyframes during a flight of the unmanned aerial vehicle, wherein the one or more keyframes include a physical location of the unmanned aerial vehicle determined based on visual tracking;
• compute a spline based on the one or more keyframes, resulting in a computed spline;
• and
• during a subsequent flight of the unmanned aerial vehicle according to the computed spline, modify the computed spline based on a flight command received from a remote control device, wherein to modify the computed spline, the flight command is attenuated according to a dampening function applied to the flight command.

A method of operating an unmanned aerial vehicle, the method comprising:

• in a flight control subsystem of the unmanned aerial vehicle:
• defining one or more keyframes during a flight of the unmanned aerial vehicle, wherein the one or more keyframes include a physical location of the unmanned aerial vehicle determined based on visual tracking;
• computing a spline based on the one or more keyframes, resulting in a computed spline;
• and
• during a subsequent flight of the unmanned aerial vehicle according to the computed spline, modifying the computed spline based on a flight command received from a remote control device, wherein modifying the computed spline comprises attenuating the flight command according to a dampening function applied to the flight command.