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Crazy idea ? Good idea ? Stupid idea ?

themis4

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Hi to all.
A big enemy to our drones are the aerial power lines .
And sometimes you cannot see them from your mobile or tablet screen.
Fwd sensors cannot identify.
So , my idea is :
The DJI app or Litchi to be able to recognise the power line wire from a distance , and have a marking scheme by a colour .
Like overexposure warning .
Thanks .
12.jpg
 
How would the app supposed to recognise power lines if the forward sensors can't even detect them?
 
And sometimes you cannot see them from your mobile or tablet screen.
You should be able to see them with your naked eye, as well as your drone. Never trust on your FPV screen with limited field of view and no situational awareness.
 
Yes it could ! From camera live image .
How the camera can recognize the shape of face?
I would never put all my trust in an app. It's nice to have facial recognition technology for selfies but that has nothing to do with flying a remote aircraft.
 
My understanding is the primary camera is already a part of the obstacle avoidance technology.
I prefer to use google earth to plan my journey and get to know where I‘m headed before hand.
 
To me the major enemies or danger to our drones are the big birds... Hawks, eagles, gees, etc. They will attack without warning. I always check the sky to make sure these birds are not close to me.
 
To me the major enemies or danger to our drones are the big birds... Hawks, eagles, gees, etc. They will attack without warning. I always check the sky to make sure these birds are not close to me.
...or you catch them by surprise and have a chuckle over the facial expression of a bird :D

On a side note, I think the idea is not bad at all, I am doubtful about the feasibility though.
Another thing to point out is that, although the idea might be good- there are always numbnuts around that will then fly their drones straight into power lines which the can clearly see with their own eyes because they stand only 5m away from him, and then blame the app for not warning them... :mad:
 
...or you catch them by surprise and have a chuckle over the facial expression of a bird :D

On a side note, I think the idea is not bad at all, I am doubtful about the feasibility though.
Another thing to point out is that, although the idea might be good- there are always numbnuts around that will then fly their drones straight into power lines which the can clearly see with their own eyes because they stand only 5m away from him, and then blame the app for not warning them... :mad:

-Harassing wildlife.
Stupid idea.
 
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Nice video close-up of perhaps a Coopers Hawk. It was not a vulture/buzzard. You are lucky he decided not to take your drone out. Most Hawks are territorial.
 
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My understanding is the primary camera is already a part of the obstacle avoidance technology.
I prefer to use google earth to plan my journey and get to know where I‘m headed before hand.
I don' think the primary camera has any built-in obstacle avoidance. It wouldn't work when you are panning the camera up and down.
 
...or you catch them by surprise and have a chuckle over the facial expression of a bird :D

On a side note, I think the idea is not bad at all, I am doubtful about the feasibility though.
Another thing to point out is that, although the idea might be good- there are always numbnuts around that will then fly their drones straight into power lines which the can clearly see with their own eyes because they stand only 5m away from him, and then blame the app for not warning them... :mad:
Nice shot.. I'd been to afraid to try it thanks for sharing
 
...or you catch them by surprise and have a chuckle over the facial expression of a bird :D

On a side note, I think the idea is not bad at all, I am doubtful about the feasibility though.
Another thing to point out is that, although the idea might be good- there are always numbnuts around that will then fly their drones straight into power lines which the can clearly see with their own eyes because they stand only 5m away from him, and then blame the app for not warning them... :mad:

Nice... a Peregrine Falcon? Not a Buzzard.
 
If you've ever used a rangefinder camera like the old Polaroid folders or a Leica, you, you'd understand that the parallax merge focus method can only discriminate distance to objects that are differentiated along an axis non coplanar with the line between the two focusing windows. The Mavic cannot detect the distance to a horizontal object that looks more or less the same along its length. It can tell the distance to a vertical edge because the edge in the view of one camera is 'x' pixels to the left of the edge in the other camera.

The more pixels difference, the closer the Mavic is to the object. Unfortunately, the engineers who implemented the optical object avoidance tech in DJI birds followed an anthropomorphic model and used 2 horizontal 'eyes' to emulate human type depth perception. The result is that a line 10 feet ahead of the Mavic at 45 degrees from the horizontal will be assessed to be at a distance of 14.14 feet and that line at a 30 degrees from horizontal will be calculated at 20 feet. A clearly visible horizontal line such as a powerline will be assessed to be at infinity.

If the engineers had added a 3rd eye arranged at the vertices of an equilateral triangle, the Mavic would be capable of accurately detecting range to vertical, horizontal and diagonally aligned objects and accurately detemine distance to any surface or objects with any distinct shape or alignment.

A compromise using 2 cameras would be to place them so that one is above and to the right or left of the other so that they are laid out 45 degrees from the horizontal and of course facing forward along parallel axes. Although the range measurement to both vertical and horizontal objects must be computed to be closer by 41 percent (assuming same center to center distance between sensor cameras), the Mavic would be able to detect range to a broader range of objects found in the environment. At least power lines, fence rails, building tops, window tops and other large horizontal edges wider than the optical avoidance field of view could be detected and avoided.
 
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the problem then becomes the degree of separation between the sensors and the included angle to the object to be ranged. having had a little experience with this sort of ranging method for other applications, it can be done, but only within limits, and with a lot of interactive feedback from an operator.

it would be much better if the sensors could be relocated to the front motor pods just inboard of the front nav LEDs, but you then have the issue of space in the pods and legs for equipment and wiring, increased complexity of the wiring loom out through the front arm hinges, and electrical noise isolation from the motors and power wiring to them.

even then, the sensors need to be of a high enough resolution to discern any sized aerial span cable (and I've got a length of single strand fibre on my desk at work that is only about half the size of a pencil in cross section, but will do a 500 metre span no problems - no, that's not a typo) and the onboard computer needs to be able to process that and halt the aircraft from max speed before impact, or at least display it visually fast enough that the pilot could actively do the same. in all lighting conditions from dim light to haze to backlit glare, for all colours of cable, against all colours of background.

and ultimately, we as the purchaser will pay for all of the hardware and R&D to make it happen.

it's a nice idea, but I have doubts about the feasibility of implementation.
 
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You should be able to see them with your naked eye, as well as your drone. Never trust on your FPV screen with limited field of view and no situational awareness.

Yes Thumbswayup
If you need an App to warn you of local power lines maybe some other hobby would be better suited to you.
I still can't believe some peeps need rear sensors to stop them Reversing in to things..
 
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