Well, I'm impressed!

Droning on and on... · 2024-10-20T13:37:43-0400

The new Einstein RTH:

wco81 · 2024-10-20T13:55:22-0400

There's already a smart RTH topic, probably should merge with that one.

mavic3usa · 2024-10-20T14:31:59-0400

That's awesome. Much improvement with RTH, let's keep it going!

davidarmenb · 2024-10-20T14:55:31-0400

That same YouTube Channel posted another video where he takes off deep inside what seems to be an underground garage, goes out flying in the city, descends to like 20 feet above ground somewhere far away, in between a bunch of buildings, and initiates RTH. The 3S then comes all the way back even though as soon as it enters the garage, GPS goes to 0 and it still needs to fly a few more minutes to get to the home point! Really incredible!

davidarmenb · 2024-10-20T14:59:18-0400

Honestly hard to believe even though I’m seeing it with my own eyes.

Bad Santa · 2024-10-20T15:03:24-0400

It looked a lot like it was just retracing it's steps. There was a much more efficient route to "home".

waynorth · 2024-10-20T15:19:42-0400

davidarmenb said:
That same YouTube Channel posted another video where he takes off deep inside what seems to be an underground garage, goes out flying in the city, descends to like 20 feet above ground somewhere far away, in between a bunch of buildings, and initiates RTH. The 3S then comes all the way back even though as soon as it enters the garage, GPS goes to 0 and it still needs to fly a few more minutes to get to the home point! Really incredible!

He uses a 4G connection in both of these videos, but it is impressive anyway.

mavic3usa · 2024-10-20T15:31:56-0400

Bad Santa said:
It looked a lot like it was just retracing it's steps. There was a much more efficient route to "home".

I would hope it gets smarter than that. If you fly for 20 minutes and you only have 5 minutes of battery left, you cannot simply retrace your steps so I hoping the improvements this new type of smart return would be able to adjust for battery strength as well as wind conditions, objects that move, and other unexpected situations. If a pilot can fly the drone home, the perfect RTH process can do it to...without a pilot.

And what if it cannot make it home; I would like to see the drone able to choose an emergency landing spot suitable for easy retrieval instead of landing on the freeway or on the roof of a building. This is where AI RTH comes in.

We have a long way to go but just from what I am seeing in the video comes a long way. I can't tell you how many times drones are lost because they fail to negotiate obstacles properly or overhead during the now-obsolete RTH methods. Imagine if you had a one-hour battery and you lost the signal behind a maze of complex buildings after just 10 minutes at night and the drone knew it could choose (you could choose) to clear the downtown area of all buildings first and RTH directly in the clear taking 20 minutes to do so but it's not the most efficient path but the safest because it's dark.

davidarmenb · 2024-10-20T16:15:05-0400

waynorth said:
He uses a 4G connection in both of these videos, but it is impressive anyway.

Yes indeed! My post wasn’t about the signal, just about the new RTH capabilities.
However, regarding the signal, you can see that he has a decent RC connection for most of the flight, despite being, I assume, in an underground garage!