Disable Obstacle Avoidance to increase flight time?

[Hawkwind]

Has anyone experimented with disabling obstacle avoidance to see if you get increased flight time? I plan to try this, but thought I'd check to see if anyone else has tried this.

 

[Starz]

It’s been talked about.
As I remember, you won’t see a meaningful difference.

 

[Meta4]

Has anyone experimented with disabling obstacle avoidance to see if you get increased flight time? I plan to try this, but thought I'd check to see if anyone else has tried this.

There might be a small difference in flight time and there will be a substantial increase in speed and distance.
Of course you get a substantial improvement when you disable Obstacle Avoidance.
The drone tilts forward to fly forward, it tilts more to fly faster.
But the OA cannot work if you fly faster than 22 mph because the tilt angle is too great.
Turn off OA and you can fly faster.
Fly faster and you cover more distance.

If you don't need OA, it's pretty silly to leave it enabled.

 

[RayOZ]

If you turn it off, you then tend to fly faster, which then reduces flight time. So...
Not sure a few extra seconds in hover time makes a big difference.

 

[Unknown Pilot]

There might be a small difference in flight time and there will be a substantial increase in speed and distance.
Of course you get a substantial improvement when you disable Obstacle Avoidance.
The drone tilts forward to fly forward, it tilts more to fly faster.
But the OA cannot work if you fly faster than 22 mph because the tilt angle is too great.
Turn off OA and you can fly faster.
Fly faster and you cover more distance.

If you don't need OA, it's pretty silly to leave it enabled.

If you feel the need for speed then switch it to sports mode, which itself temporarily disables OA. Key word there is temporarily.

 

[Meta4]

If you feel the need for speed then switch it to sports mode, which itself temporarily disables OA. Key word there is temporarily.

Sport mode burns battery faster and will give a shorter battery time.
If you are looking for maximum distance per battery, switch off OA and fly at max speed in P-GPS mode.

 

[Unknown Pilot]

Sport mode burns battery faster and will give a shorter battery time.
If you are looking for maximum distance per battery, switch off OA and fly at max speed in P-GPS mode.

You choose to fly faster in sport mode because you can. You don’t have to though.

 

[WithTheBirds]

If you consider that the Movidius Myriad 2 vision processing SOC has a power consumption of less that 1W even adding in the connected load of the associated cameras the total will provide for a very small component of the total power consumption with the Mavic in flight. Any difference, to the extent it is measurable will be insignificant.

 

[Dave Maine]

The vast majority of the energy budget for a drone is spent keeping it aloft at a constant altitude, since it has no wings. Lateral movement budget is for overcoming air resistance, which increases with the square of the velocity.

obstacle avoidance energy costs are very minimal, as the electronic energy cost is almost 0, and the amount of energy cost needed for lateral movement for small obstacles is small.

Gaining significant altitude and increasing flight time would be costly.

 

[Hawkwind]

I do anticipate that power consumption of the OA processes will be much less than that of the motors. I may do a study and collect data if no one has done it yet.

@Dave Maine I understand that gaining altitude will consume power, but what do you mean by increasing flight time being costly?

 

[WithTheBirds]

I do anticipate that power consumption of the OA processes will be much less than that of the motors. I may do a study and collect data if no one has done it yet.

@Dave Maine I understand that gaining altitude will consume power, but what do you mean by increasing flight time being costly?

Your proposed study will be problematic. It is likely you won’t be able to control the test parameters sufficiently to obtain a meaningful result. It is known that the Myriad 2 processor (used for OA) consumes less that 1W. What do you expect that contribution might be as a % of total power consumption? It’s probably a pointless exercise however please share your results if you proceed.

 

[Dave Maine]

Costly in terms of requiring more power from the batteries

 

[WithTheBirds]

Costly in terms of requiring more power from the batteries

I suspect the confusion might have been your applying terms ordinarily encountered and applied in financial accounting rather than in electrical engineering disciplines.

 

[Hawkwind]

Actually, no. It just seemed redundant to say that flying longer would consume more battery power.

 

[WithTheBirds]

Actually, no. It just seemed redundant to say that flying longer would consume more battery power.

Obviously the assumption was your intent is to gain additional flight distance (noted you never said that anywhere).

 

[Dave Maine]

Cost, as in energy cost, is frequently used in engineering as well. Systems engineers are always analyzing what the cost of a particular decision or condition would be.

 

[Hawkwind]

Obviously the assumption was your intent is to gain additional flight distance (noted you never said that anywhere).

My intent is to to look for ways to gain additional flight time. That may correspond to additional flight distance, but that is not a given.

I do know that I can gain additional flight distance with a Spark in Sport mode vs. P-mode with OA, but I'm not sure if that is the case with the Mavic Pro.