Drone Triggered Auto Land

[Paul Schulze]

Hello All, I am new to this particular forum as well to the Mavic. As I have been waiting for my new Mavic 2 Zoom to arrive, I have been studying a downloaded user's manual. One thing that sparked my interest was the drone triggered auto land feature. I knew about the low battery trigger, but I was unaware of the high wind trigger or perhaps any others. I really have two questions:

1) Why does DJI have an auto land which cannot be cancelled? If for safety reasons it seems to me to make no sense. If it falls or lands on someone they could be hurt in either case (I do know about the ability to maneuver the drone). It makes more sense to me to at least try and bring it home especially if flying over water. I sure I am not the first person to wonder about this. I'm sorry if this issue has been discussed before as my search could not find it.

2) . Since DJI will probably not make changes to auto descend, my second question deals more with the maneuverability feature of the drone while auto descending. Can any tell me what the rate of descent of the drone during auto descent? The reason for my asking deals with determining how far a pilot can move the drone toward home during descent.

Thanks in Advance, Paul

 

[Simmo]

High wind will not 'trigger' autoland mate?
Critical Low Battery or user command is it?
The Mavic 2 has a max descent speed of 3m/s
From the manual:
If the current battery level can only support the aircraft long enough to descend from its current altitude, a critically low battery level warning triggers and the aircraft descends and lands automatically. This cannot be canceled. If there is a danger of a collision, push the throttle up and try to navigate away

 

[RayOZ]

The forced auto land on critical battery level is safer than to allow a pilot to continue flying until the battery is drained completely and falls out of the sky. The auto land is controlled/slowed descend such that if there’s anyone under it, they can get out of the way. The critical battery level is 15% and I usually land my 30%, so very little chance of getting into the auto land scenario.

 

[Thomas B]

In the case of critically low battery, better to land... where anyone below would have a chance of seeing or hearing the drone and the drone has a chance of safely landing thus preserving itself. The alternative is falling quietly from the sky without lights at a much greater velocity creating a larger risk to those below than a forced landing.

if you want to change the landing location in forced landing situations you can do so within the time needed for descent of the drone.

 

[dirkclod]

If that ever does happen to you point your camera down and try and find the best place to land.

 

[pmshop]

If you are not in critical battery landing mode, you can cancel the return home/ auto land by switching to Sport mode and back.
However, they are all safety features as mentioned before.
So if you fly out at the beginning of a battery, lose contact and it RTH, you can safely cancel once it gets back into range because you still have a good charge on the battery.

But if you have been flying around a lot, then go out of range and it RTH, leave it automatic return and landing.
You do not want it to come down somewhere you cannot get to it.

 

[Paul Schulze]

Thank you all as you have been helpful. You have clearly stated the reason why the auto land is needed.

I do have a couple of final questions. Is the 15% battery level for auto lading fixed in stone? Finally, is the advertised 31 minute flight time shortened by the auto land? Oh, also is the horizontal speed greatly reduced during auto land?

 

[pmshop]

Thank you all as you have been helpful. You have clearly stated the reason why the auto land is needed.

I do have a couple of final questions. Is the 15% battery level for auto lading fixed in stone? Finally, is the advertised 31 minute flight time shortened by the auto land? Oh, also is the horizontal speed greatly reduced during auto land?

You really should not take a Lipo Battery past 20% to prevent damage and promote longevity.

 

[Paul2660]

You can still fly the drone back to you even with auto land activated. Just keep left stick upward pressure and fly it back. As soon as you let off the left stick it will start to land. Not something you want to do often. But there are times it might come in handy.


Paul C

 

[DanMan32]

The forced land SoC level is dynamic, depending on your altitude. A higher altitude takes more time to land, and the M2 accounts for this.

 

[RayOZ]

Thank you all as you have been helpful. You have clearly stated the reason why the auto land is needed.

I do have a couple of final questions. Is the 15% battery level for auto lading fixed in stone? Finally, is the advertised 31 minute flight time shortened by the auto land? Oh, also is the horizontal speed greatly reduced during auto land?

I think you can adjust that down to 10%. Rarely does anyone ever get 31 mins of flight time. Realistically, ~21 mins when landing at 30%. 31 mins is marketing for extremely ideal situations. Like the mileage they market for cars.

 

[Thomas B]

I think you can adjust that down to 10%. Rarely does anyone ever get 31 mins of flight time. Realistically, ~21 mins when landing at 30%. 31 mins is marketing for extremely ideal situations. Like the mileage they market for cars.

Or less if your drone is bucking a wind.

 

[DanMan32]

You can adjust the warning, but nothing else.

 

[msinger]

I think you can adjust that down to 10%. Rarely does anyone ever get 31 mins of flight time.

The auto landing is auto triggered. There are no settings in DJI GO to configure it. While it is possible to completely disable that feature (using the backdoor settings in an old version of DJI Assistant 2), it's not a great idea if you want to ensure your drone always safely makes it to the ground.