so i was practicing a little low proximity flying today, when my propwash kicked up a wood chip and a leaf.  not sure which one spooked the spark sensor, but it locked into position and wouldn't continue to fly forwards unless i let off the sticks and then got back on them.  i'm wondering if this is some kind of a dead man safety to keep the spark from inadvertantly flying forward if the sticks jam.



you can see where i spliced the video just after the red leaf flutters by.

Interesting.

So in this "use case", the drone perceived an obstacle that triggered it's obstacle avoidance, and the object happened to be a "temporary" phenomenon (it blew away), but the spark continued to behave as though it were avoiding the obstacle until the sticks were "neutral".

This is testable:  Someone (me) could fly the spark at an easily movable obstacle (me), keep the hands on the sticks and move the obstacle (me), and see if the spark maintains its position.  We can see if this is consistent and designed behavior (well at least consistent).

Thanks for sharing your experience. Pay attention to the error message from your app when you want to test your spark.

there is a safty feature in the spark and all modern dji drones if the props get jammed they will stop fighting the jam however what you encountered is definitely obstacle avoidance seeing something fly in front of it and the spark stopped as it should have.    when i owned a spark, bees were a problem for me, they constantly attacking my spark and i couldn't fly with avoidance enabled on my property because if i flew close enough to where workers are my spark would just get stuck  in place until it chopped all the bees apart or until i flipped to sport mode.  

i doubt a wood chip being tossed up by propwash would been enough to triggered the spark's ESC protection, it would likely kicked it off the props..