I was doing a Demo of my Mavic Air in a Ballroom for a large group of people. Hand jesture, what I call Jedi Demo went quite well to the aazement of all present. Then I put a spectator on the DJI Googles and I flew the Mavic Air around an open air part of the Ballroom. Thats went things went very bad. For the first few minutes things were great then the Mavic just took off into the croud by itself not rsponding to my controls and it picking up speed. The Mavic slammed in to a spectator making several slices on his arm. Very scary!!! Fortunatley he was calm. After we bandaged him up he was still interested in talking to me and asking questions about drones but I was very concerned about why the Mavic went rogue. Has anyone else experienced this type of behavier? I wondered if the controlers for the LED overhead lights had caused electronic interference.

sounds like a "dont fly indoor" scenario. just dont.
i guess in your flightlog there will be something like 'switched to atti mode'.

It’s impossible to tell what went wrong without some more information, can you upload log, link below.
http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

hallmark007 Posted at 2018-9-10 14:45
It’s impossible to tell what went wrong without some more information, can you upload log, link below.
http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

Thanks I will  try the logs I never thought of that. I will post the info.

The whole scenario just sounds poorly thought out.  

I never fly indoors, because of the weak or no gps signal. And DJI drones are gps drones.

Fly safe
Alex

Hmm!  I see all kinds of problems with this but just gonna keep my big mouth shut.

lol people saying shouldn't fly indoors even though its an advertised feature of these drones.. because of VPS and VIO and to some extend even the IMU being able to figure out where it is in 3D space using all of these things.   dji drones dont require GPS to fly either..

as for should you have flown inside with crowd of people.... simple answer of no.    fly it outside if you want to demo these drones to crowds of people, if something goes wrong for any reason, you can land or crash the drones somewhere that isn't someone's face or arm.  

as for why it lost control, hard to say why, without a log file to look at.   but i'm going to guess based on logic and experience:  it switched from from visual position mode to Atti mode as it experienced some system failure, probably a compass error from poor shielding of old wiring or bad conversion efforts of switching from old school lighting to LED lighting which results in a lot of EMF energy spewing everywhere..

That's not good! Lucky the victim stayed calm. Whatever happened here, it cannot be the atti mode right? Even if it went to atti mode, this should not be the behavior? Unless you are holding a stick in one direction. In atti mode you should still be able to control the drone, albeit with a little more effort. It can drift and not hold position.

Jackp2 Posted at 2018-9-10 15:34
That's not good! Lucky the victim stayed calm. Whatever happened here, it cannot be the atti mode right? Even if it went to atti mode, this should not be the behavior? Unless you are holding a stick in one direction. In atti mode you should still be able to control the drone, albeit with a little more effort. It can drift and not hold position.

depends on why its in atti.   a system failure for example may cause issues.   

  also if the compass flipped backwards from strong magnetic interference which can happen indoors more easily.  it may have seen him pulling the stick back to stop as the other direction causing it to pick up speed instead of stopping or slowing down..

Reminder:

• Depending on how high you were flying, the downward sensor has a limit - see manual.  If it is too high, it will not work.
• Per Manual, if flying indoors, it is recomended to use propeller guards.
  

AForceOne Posted at 2018-9-10 15:59
Reminder:

Depending on how high you were flying, the downward sensor has a limit - see manual.  If it is too high, it will not work.

given he crashed into someone's arms, i doubt he was outside of VPS range, VPS should work up to 30-40 feet high..

Christine96 Posted at 2018-9-10 15:01
Hmm!  I see all kinds of problems with this but just gonna keep my big mouth shut.

Me too....

If flying indoors, use propeller guards and a remote control.

This was just plain dumb! There, I said it!

Mavic Pro with Prop cages would probably be a better choice for inside demonstrations.  Still woudn't want to get whacked in face by Mavic Pro that went Rogue.

Hmmmm, not sure you’re going to get much sympathy for this!

Thanks God You did not injure the person more seriously. No respect for such demonstrations without using prop guards

Hi. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Did you saw any error message showing in the app?

Ok I expected to get criticism on my demo and well deserved. I appreciate all the comments positive and negative. Prop guards at the very least would thwarted the injury.  There are many other safety steps to be taken in future demos. The Mavic Air should be able to fly indoor without a problem. I wanted to accomplish two things by posting my situation.  First alert others to what might happen. Second find out if anyone else has had this issue and what might have caused it.

Several flights indoors under my belt here, some suggestions:

Use catch and release netting to form an enclosure when demonstrating, you can buy pvc piping on the cheap to create a truss for the mavic to fly in.

You can use tape to create patterns on the floor for the vps to pick up on, I use multicolored gaffers tape to create triangle patterns on a large piece of cardboard when flying indoors.

You must make sure your DJI drone stays in opti mode, you'll have to come up with the best solution that works for you on this one, there are a few ways to accomplish this.

make sure your settings are appropriate for your environment, there is no one size fits all for settings, you can plan accordingly.
Hope it helps!

Also,
prop guards will not prevent injury when flying over unprepared crowds, best to not fly over civilian crowds with out at least a sign warning that they may suffer injury in the event of an emergency., document the incident and follow up with the person you injured, as the liability of the accident might still become an issue.

Admins - We hear these knucklehead reports so frequently from newbies, it's scary.  I'm frankly shocked the OP is still clinging to the thought that indoor flight around a bunch of people is OK.  I'm not even going to enter the debate.  Obviously, he is actually thinking this scenario is acceptable and appears to be suggesting trying this again.

On behalf of his future victims, can you please disable this drone. Depress that self-destruct button now. This guy is a danger to himself and everyone around him.

haha 'please disable his drone' ..

Indoors with a crowd of people should have had the prop guards on. So OP, were you using the remote control at the point you lost control? If not, that's were things could easily go wrong. I'm going to assume you weren't. In my opinion you took too many risks and that bystander paid for it.

UAVNV Posted at 2018-9-11 08:43
Several flights indoors under my belt here, some suggestions:

Use catch and release netting to form an enclosure when demonstrating, you can buy pvc piping on the cheap to create a truss for the mavic to fly in.

Use catch and release netting to form an enclosure when demonstrating,

Put the drone on a leash.  As for over crowd, hand out helmets at entrance.  

My experience with flying indoor(mavic pro): if it catches GPS suddenly, and it gets it trough windows, it will get a "broken" position, so the drone starts to fly to where it thinks it has to be. And you will not be able to correct it, mine flew against the window, and in a wall. So I stopped flying indoors. Only gonna fly indoors again when they make a manually selectable atti mode1

GhostWolf010 Posted at 2018-9-11 09:57
My experience with flying indoor(mavic pro): if it catches GPS suddenly, and it gets it trough windows, it will get a "broken" position, so the drone starts to fly to where it thinks it has to be. And you will not be able to correct it, mine flew against the window, and in a wall. So I stopped flying indoors. Only gonna fly indoors again when they make a manually selectable atti mode1

Now this is the type of answer I was looking for. Thank you for your response.

UAVNV Posted at 2018-9-11 08:43
Several flights indoors under my belt here, some suggestions:

Use catch and release netting to form an enclosure when demonstrating, you can buy pvc piping on the cheap to create a truss for the mavic to fly in.

Now that's the way to fly indoors.   Good post!

GhostWolf010 Posted at 2018-9-11 09:57
My experience with flying indoor(mavic pro): if it catches GPS suddenly, and it gets it trough windows, it will get a "broken" position, so the drone starts to fly to where it thinks it has to be. And you will not be able to correct it, mine flew against the window, and in a wall. So I stopped flying indoors. Only gonna fly indoors again when they make a manually selectable atti mode1

I flew my MA inside my house,  I live alone BTW,  but I turned everything off and had no problems.  I can't remember if or how I turned off GPS.

fans2137a6e6 Posted at 2018-9-11 10:24
Now this is the type of answer I was looking for. Thank you for your response.

But he’s said no different from anyone else - don’t fly indoors!

How are you not being sued for your carelessness?

Yes flying indoors is more or less stupid but that's nothing to debate about.

Personally I would be very interested in the flight log to see what really went wrong so we can learn from it. That's what mistakes are good for: to improve and to never repeat them.

FntX Posted at 2018-9-11 22:18
Yes flying indoors is more or less stupid but that's nothing to debate about.

Personally I would be very interested in the flight log to see what really went wrong so we can learn from it. That's what mistakes are good for: to improve and to never repeat them.

True, but in this case the lesson is easy..... don’t fly in a confined space with people around!

InvisibleName 7 Posted at 2018-9-11 22:35
True, but in this case the lesson is easy..... don’t fly in a confined space with people around!

I disagree - just forget about the people around. Why would the drone go crazy suddenly? I'm here for the science, not for the plain obvious ;)

You’re kidding, right? “Forget about the people around”!!! The most basic & number 1 rule of flying a drone is to take every possible precaution to not put anybody at risk!

you can never trust the opti mode. the mavic can lose the "opti mode" in a splitsecond and switch to atti and your drone is gone. it can drift away so fast you won't be able to correct it, even as an experienced pilot.

bottom line: never trust opti mode. if you fly opti, fly super carefull and expect destroying your drone.

OMFG! Probably use the tello if you want to demo indoors.

I keep seeing people say things like: "I do not fly in X because there is no GPS signal". or "I had a flyaway or crash because it lost a GPS signal". YOU DO NOT NEED GPS SIGNAL TO FLY DJI DRONES. Please stop relying on GPS to compensate for lack of piloting skills.

You indeed do not need GPS, but a when you can not switch it off, and it suddenly kicks in(I have proof that my drone f**ked up because of a bad GPS position because I flew indoors), then it does not matter how good of a pilot you are, it will crash