Mavic Pro obstacle avoidance limitations

[richtroy]

Today I was flying in a school gym with a local flying club and permission of the school.

The good news:

The Mavic Pro collision avoidance worked amazingly well to stop the forward motion into the white wall at the far side of the gym. At a very slow forward speed, it stopped further forward movement at 4 feet. At higher speeds, it stopped in time to avoid hitting the white wall.

Some limitations:

On one run, it did not stop when the forward image was an 8" wide black strip of the black painted steel column in the wall. The result was a crash.

On a previous day, I had the Mavic drone slowly approach an aluminum park bench 'back rest' that was not exactly vertical. It was leaning maybe 15 degrees back. The Mavic collision acted like it was not there.

 

[YngveN]

Are you getting paid to test the OA? Just seems like a strange thing to do to repeatedly trying to fly your Mavic into walls and other objects. But thanks for sharing your findings

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

Bit like banging your head against a brick wall, its great when you stop.lol

 

[JohnnyD913]

ACTUALLY checking the distance at which the obstacle avoidance first detects an object is extremely useful
Knowledge.
I too check my birds by slowing creeping up on like
A dumpster or such.
It’s a good thing I did too cause this Mavic does not detect
Until about 8 feet away and that’s a very slow crawl.
There is no way the bird would have adequate braking
If I were anything over 8-10 mph

 

[gjmphoto]

The only time I've seen crash avoidance working is when I'm trying to navigate into a tighter space and it stops me from doing what I want. I usually have to rotate away from the object so that the forward sensors don't see it and slide sideways into the spot I want to go and then rotate back (which equals more post processing editing).

They definitely work and it's nice to know they're there - so I'm not turning them off...but they get in the way more than they help - I don't want to rely on them and hope I never need them.

 

[DTC709]

The biggest bonus I can seem from them, would be when using active track