First post here. I just wanted to share my story/experience with my Inspire 2 today.
I have some background operating DJI drones, I've owned a Phantom 3 4K, and currently own a Phantom 4 Pro and a now mangled Inspire 2. My dad has an Inspire 1 and a Matrice 210. I have a good amount of exposure to how these things work, and have had nothing but a great experience with them up to this point.
Today I wanted to test the Active Tracking feature on my Inspire 2, and see how well it would follow my dirt bike. I had no plans of going fast or doing anything wild, just wanted to see how well the feature worked on this drone. Since I've purchased, all firmware has been updated and test flights previous to today made me pretty confident letting this thing fly by itself in a pretty open environment.
I get the Inspire flight ready, take off, do a little round about to make sure everything feels good and brought it back near home point. Confident the drone was ready to go, I hopped on my YZ450 (it had been warming up, blowing the cob webs out of the exhaust) and putted ever so slowly through the dirt in the roping arena at my house. In first gear going about ~5 mph, eyes on the drone the whole time (I had my brother watching the remote for me). While the drone indeed followed me, it began making very aggresive movements, radically moving back and forth (this can be seen in the flight record video below).
I was NOT comfortable with this whatsoever (keep in mind I am only about ~30-40ft away from the takeoff point) so I turned the bike around and went to go set it down. As I was lifting my leg over the seat to get off, I heard the motors wind up and the drone shot backwards and just smacked itself into the roof of the garage adjacent to the arena. I was seriously ready to cry, my X5S camera was on board and I had only had this thing for a handful of days. I run over to where the drone ended up landing (on concrete, of course) and I was seriously so upset with myself. Two of the four motors were ripped off the arms, the camera lay mangled, cables hanging out of the gimbal. I was beside myself.
As you can see in the pictures above, the carnage is pretty gnarly. Somehow, my 25mm Olympus lense made it out just fine, along with the batteries. These are the only parts that didn't absolutely demolished here. Link below for flight record video, sped through most of it for time/file size sake, but you can see the flight path matches my story above exactly.
This occured about 4 hours ago, I have already filed repair/replace case with DJI for both the drone and the camera, and they have already been shipped off for analysis. I really feel as if this was a product defect, and the collision/object avoidance should have definitely prevented this crash. If you pay attention in the flight record video, the drone reached 25mph before hitting the roof. I understand I probably should've had it flying at a higher altitude, but the collision avoidance in my previous flights had always been on point. Hopefully DJI's analysis will reflect what happened here. Maybe they'll be able to catch something I didn't.
I would love to hear thoughts on this, and if anyone has any suggestions. Thanks for reading.
Hi there, we are sincerely sorry for the crash accident, our data analysis team will do their best to figure out what happened, if you need any assistance, please keep us updated with the case number, thank you.
I had a crash in ActiveTrack mode on P4Pro, sensors screamed, but drone was not stopped and crashed into rock.
from that moment I never let my drones fly in ActieTrack without my control.
So, correct me if I'm wrong ... You set the drone to perform Active Track flight and ask your grandma (or brother?) to watch RC while you've been busy driving your dirt bike? What for? What may be the possible outcome of just watching the RC? Pehaps the pilot behind RC would be able to react and eventually overdrive any strange behaviour of your quad ... As much as I'm sorry for your loss, I'll be very surprised if DJI will ever consider any compensation on your behalf ...
Nasty crash - very sorry to read of your loss. Looking at the flight record it seems the drone reversed into the roof - the Inspire 2 does not have rear facing OA to detect obstacles behind it. I wish you luck on the replacement and my only advice is when you get the new Inspire 2 back in the air (fingers crossed) always ensure you are in complete control of the flight - never put the RC on the ground or even in the hands of a third party when you are legally responsible for the drone in operation. Intelligent flight modes are automated and do not place full autonomy into the hands of the drone thus you need to be able to intervene in a split second should anything go wrong. Had the RC been in your hands whilst you active tracked someone else on the bike I'm fairly confident you would still have your Inspire 2 now. Whether a manufacturer defect or not the risk leading to this crash was significantly increased the second you left the remote with the drone still in the air.
A J Posted at 9-8 06:26
Nasty crash - very sorry to read of your loss. Looking at the flight record it seems the drone reversed into the roof - the Inspire 2 does not have rear facing OA to detect obstacles behind it. I wish you luck on the replacement and my only advice is when you get the new Inspire 2 back in the air (fingers crossed) always ensure you are in complete control of the flight - never put the RC on the ground or even in the hands of a third party when you are legally responsible for the drone in operation. Intelligent flight modes are automated and do not place full autonomy into the hands of the drone thus you need to be able to intervene in a split second should anything go wrong. Had the RC been in your hands whilst you active tracked someone else on the bike I'm fairly confident you would still have your Inspire 2 now. Whether a manufacturer defect or not the risk leading to this crash was significantly increased the second you left the remote with the drone still in the air.
As far as not being in control of the RC during this, that was definitely an oversight on my side. Needless to say, that will never happen again. My brother was watching to let me know if any errors popped up. I just didn't anticipate it to behave with the aggressive movements it was doing during the flight. This has definitely been a learning experience for myself. Just grateful that nobody got hurt.
Matthew Dobrski Posted at 9-8 00:49
So, correct me if I'm wrong ... You set the drone to perform Active Track flight and ask your grandma (or brother?) to watch RC while you've been busy driving your dirt bike? What for? What may be the possible outcome of just watching the RC? Pehaps the pilot behind RC would be able to react and eventually overdrive any strange behaviour of your quad ... As much as I'm sorry for your loss, I'll be very surprised if DJI will ever consider any compensation on your behalf ...
Not being in control of the RC was my mistake, for sure. A great learning experience, albeit an expensive one. I am just hoping it can be repaired for a reasonable price. Regardless, I'm going to need my Inspire back. Thank you for your time and input.
Logan&Chris1337 Posted at 9-8 10:15
As far as not being in control of the RC during this, that was definitely an oversight on my side. Needless to say, that will never happen again. My brother was watching to let me know if any errors popped up. I just didn't anticipate it to behave with the aggressive movements it was doing during the flight. This has definitely been a learning experience for myself. Just grateful that nobody got hurt.
I can imagine that was a scary moment to put it mildly - glad no-one was hurt - hope you get the replacement soon.
Matthew Dobrski Posted at 9-8 00:49
So, correct me if I'm wrong ... You set the drone to perform Active Track flight and ask your grandma (or brother?) to watch RC while you've been busy driving your dirt bike? What for? What may be the possible outcome of just watching the RC? Pehaps the pilot behind RC would be able to react and eventually overdrive any strange behaviour of your quad ... As much as I'm sorry for your loss, I'll be very surprised if DJI will ever consider any compensation on your behalf ...
I set the drone into AtiveTrack and get my DSLR to make some shots.
I did active track yesterday in a soccer field had it following me and I noticed when I turn very sharp the drone stops and loses me. It lost subject but stayed in one spot. I tried again and did very wide turns and it worked fine. I wouldn't trust active track when you are the subject being recorded without the rc but just use follow me mode when you want to track yourself without the rc
lvl.1
First Officer
Administrator
lvl.4
Captain
