Manual motion commands ignored during MISSION_STATE_PAUSED, is joystick control possible while a mission is paused?

[AbubakarAliyuBadawi]

Manual motion commands ignored during MISSION_STATE_PAUSED — is joystick control possible while a mission is paused?

We are building a human-robot shared control system where an operator can take over manual control mid-mission and resume the mission afterwards. We are using drone.mission.pause() to pause the mission and then attempting to send manual motion commands to the drone via drone.motion.surge / drone.motion.heave.

What we observed

When the mission is in MISSION_STATE_PAUSED, the firmware appears to ignore all MotionInput commands. We tested this by:

1. Running a DepthSetPoint mission to 0.5m
2. Calling drone.mission.pause() and confirming MISSION_STATE_PAUSED
3. Sending drone.motion.heave = -0.3 continuously at 10 Hz for 4 seconds
4. Monitoring depth — no change beyond positive buoyancy drift

We also confirmed that on pause, the firmware automatically sets station_keeping=True. We disabled station keeping explicitly and retried — motion commands were still ignored.

Control modes at pause (logged via ControlModeTel)

Question

Is it by design that MotionInput commands are ignored during MISSION_STATE_PAUSED? Is there any way to allow manual joystick control (surge/sway/heave) while a mission is paused and then resume the mission from where it left off via drone.mission.run()?

If not, is the recommended approach to clear() the mission on takeover and re-upload the remaining instructions on handback?

SDK version: blueye.sdk installed via pip, drone SW: 4.3.15-styhead-master

[sindrehan]

Hi,
Great that you are using the SDK and thank you for the detailed issue.

While a mission is running the MotionInput commands are explicitly blocked, it's more of a side effect. Pause was designed to "stop autopilot and hold position" and not a "hand back authority to the pilot". So the messages are arriving but they are being overwritten by the mission planning reference generator.

With the current software, I think that the best approach for you will be to do as you propose, save the remaining instrucitons, clear what's on the drone and re-upload after you're done manually controlling it. It does mean a little more book keeping on your end, but at least you won't be fighting the control system.

I do, however, think that the command you are proposing would be useful so I'll raise it with the control system team and we'll see if we can introduce it in a future update.