Daily briefing

Paladin adds terrain-following to its Watchtower public-safety flight software

Paladin announced a Terrain Follow function for its drone-as-first-responder system. The company says the feature is available for autonomous and manual flights in Watchtower and adjusts aircraft altitude as terrain rises and falls to maintain a selected height above ground.

Fixed altitude relative to takeoff can create large AGL changes over hills. For remote operations, terrain-aware planning can reduce pilot workload and help keep sensor geometry and obstacle margins more consistent.

This is a vendor release, so operators should verify the elevation-data source, horizontal resolution, update behavior, obstacle interaction and minimum safety margins in their own terrain before relying on it operationally.