Mavic Air did not stop before crash on Active Track

[groogie13]

So, as you can see in the video below, I crashed my drone quite badly while it was following me with Active Track.

The issue is that seconds before crashing I saw on the screen the RED obstacle indication. From previous experiences with Active Track, the drone should've stopped in that moment.

What are your thoughts on this one? Was it an Active Track error?

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[PhantomFandom]

So, as you can see in the video below, I crashed my drone quite badly while it was following me with Active Track.

The issue is that seconds before crashing I saw on the screen the RED obstacle indication. From previous experiences with Active Track, the drone should've stopped in that moment.

What are your thoughts on this one? Was it an Active Track error?

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Honestly I think that is a situation where you were expecting more than the drone can deliver. Obstacle avoidance cannot detect smaller items (like power lines, twigs, and thin branches). Add in the fact that these leaves were swaying in the wind and you have a situation that can (and apparently did) easily consude obstacle avoidance. I can't really tell from the video, but another contributing factor may even have been due to light and shadows. All in all, I think you were just pushing the MA to its limits with OA and went beyond what it is capable of.

 

[swooshdave]

Currently the obstacle avoidance relies on visual clues. While that works for us as humans a majority of the time even we fail at navigating objects. Maybe a some point they include some sort of radar to supplement the visual avoidance. But currently avoiding obstacles while flying, especially moving branches, at speed is not fail safe.

 

[groogie13]

Indeed, having it fly too close to moving branches was not the best idea to start with. Even if it noticed the branch at last moment, there is also the braking distance that should be taken into consideration.
I also noticed that with time and experience, sometimes I am more prone to errors, because of the "it didn't happen in past years, it won't happen now" syndrome.

 

[KingRat]

I have not flown my drone yet. I am still soaking up as much as I can, which is why I am reading this!

My take from watching the film though was it was quite windy - those branches are swaying quite violently. Could the wind have contributed to this event?

 

[groogie13]

I have not flown my drone yet. I am still soaking up as much as I can, which is why I am reading this!

My take from watching the film though was it was quite windy - those branches are swaying quite violently. Could the wind have contributed to this event?

Pretty sure it did, because I've used Active Track previously but without wind and not that close to multiple branches. I had situations when it avoided a small tree/branch but it was only one, not a multitude of them as on this video. This was a serious stress test for the Active Track system and as PhandomFandom said, I've pushed the drone beyond it's capabilities.

 

[groogie13]

So after this crash, the gimbal broke. I dissasembled the drone and managed to glue the broken pieces, but after two days the gimbal died. It doesn't move anymore using the gimbal dial on the stick. It does not auto-correct its position when I start the drone as it usually did. The gimbal has full movement, so it's not because i've glued too many pieces. Does anybody have any idea what could be the culprit for this one? Maybe the gimbal piece, or even the motherboard, if it suffered some damage after crash.