The Context: I work for a drone services company. We make software that flies drones autonomously. Recently we've found an issue with our Mavic 2 Pro drones.
We have a feature that will create a waypoint mission to go down and take a close up photo of the roof. We use the bottom sensing system to detect the roof and the distance the drone is above the roof. Once it is within 15ft it takes the photo and goes on to the next waypoint mission.
The problem: When the drone is descending over solar panels to take this close up photo of the roof it can't seem to detect it's height! It just keeps going and going. The bottom sensors will never detect the solar panels.
The question: Do the Mavic 2 Pros ever use the cameras on the bottom of the drone to detect how high up it is? Or does it only use infra-red? Because it seems like they only use the infrared sensors and thus we are having problems because solar panels are BUILT to absorb that kind of light.
Shiny or transparent surfaces will always pose problems for sensors. It’s easy to check if VPs was picking up height by checking your flight log , what height was showing when aircraft over the roof and what height was it showing when clear of the building.
Hi there, thank you for reaching out and we're sorry to hear about the trouble. With regards to one of the reasons behind that is the reflective and infrared absorber from the Solar panel that is one of the weaknesses of the sensor from the Aircraft. You may check the image attached. Thank you for your support.
lvl.2
Captain
Administrator
Second Officer