Ran my Mavic into a tree with collision avoidance ON - why ?

[pjhartog]

Frustrated the the follow and tracking modes on the Mavic are really not autonomous, I decided to track my kids today.
Obstacle Avoidance was ON, but this happened

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Where did I mess up ?
Was the tracked object in the view to close to the branch that brought the Mavic down ?

Thanks for offering suggestions what I did wrong !

 

[MChittum]

If you were in "Sport Mode", the obstacle avoidance does not work.

 

[Xtreme Drone Pilot]

Where did I mess up ?

You messed up by having unrealistic expectations, thinking that there's a little brain inside the drone that will perfectly fly drone between obstacles like you see in commercials or sci-fi CGI movies. OA is poor with branches and other non-solid objects.

How long have you had your drone? What's on video is pure insanity.

 

[Mossiback]

It looks like a combination of speed and the Mavic slipping sideways to the left. By the time the forward facing sensors detected enough tree branches there was not enough time to stop. When tracking it will take the shortest path to keep up, which means cutting corners while pointed at the subject. Many a Mavic has crashed flying sideways while in autonomous mode. The safest thing to do would be to start at a height above the trees and have the pilot stay close to take control. Even if it hadn't hit the tree it would have been a short video because the skier was going downhill and the Mavic will not drop elevation to follow, if it could maintain track through the trees at all.

 

[MadValley]

Forward sensors have a limited angular range (I seem to remember 58degrees horizontal and 48 vertical, something like that). If the Mavic is tracking with any kind of roll motion and forward speed (as yours was moving left and forward) by the time an obstacle gets into its field of view it's already too late. Plus the tracking modes want to have some kind of contrasty background. With the sunlight, shade, dark trees, and bright sky I think there wasn't any frame of reference it could put itself in. Oh! That dark spot's not shade! Oops.

There are also specific warnings that the forward vision system has a hard time with branches and wires.

Hope the drone came out of it okay.

 

[Callum]

I always think of obstacle avoidance as last resort.

There's no guarantee it will work and is pretty basic on the mavic.

Yuneec drones seem to be way ahead with the intel real sense obstacle avoidance but even then I personally wouldn't rely on it.

 

[pjhartog]

Thanks - I have had the Mavic for over 6 months and done lots of stuff and this was not the first crash either. For now it seems the drone came out ok, some damage to 2 rotors but it needed some drying and cleaning.

I guess indeed I underestimated the effect contrast / speed / angle / branches on the CA system.

And I was planning to let the drone descent further down by hand.

Will try again one of these days - and will report back !

 

[colinfowler]

active track will keep you in centre frame.
if you go left round a corner or a tree the MP will slide left to keep you in centre frame.
it will not wait till it gets to were you turned and then make its turn.
imagine you are towing a balloon on a long string and then go round a corner