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why not 360 degree avoidance?? What were you thinking?
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nrechtman
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I love the new sensor idea, but you fell short in your thinking and didn't take the idea far enough, how? You need to have sensor coverage in a comple 360 degree configuration and also on top, for example, if I'm flying backwards, away from what I'm shooting what happens if there is an obstacle behind me, boom, crash, what happens if I'm shooting in lets say an area where there is a high canopy of tree branches and my RTH kicks in an it starts ascending upwards into the trees, boom, another crash.
Another idea, I have would to have batteries on each side, opposing mount I call it, a battery snaps into each side euqaling out the weight distribution.


In the future, just ask the community, we'll tell you which features are sorely needed.

2016-3-1
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j_hamblin
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That will be something they can add on later for another $100 and call it another model name. Like the Phantom 4 360 or something.
2016-3-1
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sfcordova
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You know I was thinking the exact same thing.  If not two sensors on each side, at least two more on the opposite side for when flying backwards (from the camera's perspective).
2016-3-1
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Rain1dog
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I think the high level DJI engineers know way more than you about diminishing returns in relation to weight.  

If they added all these extra sensors youd bitch about NO WAY AM I PAYING 2,500.00 for that!!!

They cant win.

Its a very very nice craft for the price.
2016-3-1
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ArcticM39
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So far the only collision my P3A suffered was a side bump against a stubborn palm tree - my fault.
It resulted in $60 of gimbal parts and 4 hours of my labor.
A 360-avoidance system would have been great, and I'd gladly pay extra for it!
2016-3-1
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quanthonytrang
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The engineers know that the phantom only flies fwd. Therefore fwd sensors only

Anyways.. I know nothing until I get a hold of one..

But...
I think we are forgetting that the sensors may see a wider angle than what you see on your FPV. This could range up 180 degrees per sensor. If they are 180 degrees and point downwards, this can basically cover a lot of ground. Now judging from the pics, it looks like there is 2 front, 4 belly sensors pointing downwards. If that's the case, its then possible that the ground pointing sensors will be doing avoidance for rear and side and therefore close to 360 lateral and ground obstacle avoidance.

I also think that the 2 front are pointing directly forward due the p4 exceeding 40mph in sports mode. This means the 2 front needs most of the 'seeing'.
2016-3-1
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Concor

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I like to see them sensors up against tree branches. most crashes happened that way and some thing tells me that it will run in to them. if that is the case I'm going to laugh so damn hard that DJI in china will hear me laughing lol ;)
2016-3-1
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Kit Walker
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ArcticM39 Posted at 2016-3-2 10:41
So far the only collision my P3A suffered was a side bump against a stubborn palm tree - my fault.
I ...

360 collision avoidance would be great for the Phantom and Inspire because I am not always flying forwards to get dolly shots and such.., these are the times when I have had close calls.
As someone mentioned earlier.., that will probs be the P4-360 or something down the track perhaps. It's just new tech for now.
2016-3-2
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quickpoint
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I completely see what you are saying but the main camera only looks forward,  so your field of view is always straight.     That being said with you Faa Registration its clearly written only fly within LOS, so you should be able to avoid if you are following the "rules" (just because im quoting the rules doesn't mean i agree or disagree with them. just making statements).

On the other hand side and reverse sensors would really be a PAIN if they stopped your actions when ever something got into the proximity of them.   like if you flew past a tree with in the Proximity of danger you would get an alarm or drone would take action.   what if your flying around lots of objects that distract trigger the drone to take action by stopping or giving you an alarm.    i would bet 99% of the time this would just end up becoming a nuisance and just disabled.   

On top of all of that would require added processing power onboard the drone as well as more hardware, weight, cost.     and like i said before mostly just turned off.   

Rear sensors i could see being useful as doing reverse shots but if your doing LOS rules common sense will keep you reasonably safe.     Top sensors viewing above the drone would be way more important i believe.   if contact is lost or something unexpected happens putting the drone into RTH mode its going to blindly raise up to you set altitude and potentially collide into something.   also with indoor flights upper sensors could limit range of how close your get above the drone to prevent the "ceiling effect" which is a vacuum above the drone from not enough free air being pushed thru the blades.    if too close Could get pulled rapidly up.   

Only real use i could see for 360 proximity sensors is if you are flying out of LOS.     To sum it all up easily I think the side and rear sensors would be a great addition to the p4 as a feature turned off because of the negative effects(alarms/actions)   Fly "safe and sane" with common sense and caution and you will be much better off than having decisions made for you.      
2016-3-24
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quickpoint
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quanthonytrang Posted at 2016-3-1 20:40
The engineers know that the phantom only flies fwd. Therefore fwd sensors only

Anyways.. I know  ...

in sport mode they are disabled due to sharp angle of drone in flight,   also at those speeds stopping distance is quite long as well.      many people have been pointing out(complaining) that the P mode on the P4 is much slower than the P3.   this is because it needs time to identify the object that needs avoidance, then apply necessary action to prevent collision(braking)     slower speeds are needed to help prevent crashing into something you didn't see.     If 360 sensors were applied i bet the drones speed would be roughly 1/2-2/3 the speed of what many are saying is too slow for P mode as it is
2016-3-24
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terjetyl
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quickpoint Posted at 2016-3-24 23:51
I completely see what you are saying but the main camera only looks forward,  so your field of view  ...

Flying within LOS has nothing to do with this. Many crashes happens within meters of the pilot, going forward, sideways or backwards so a 360 avoidance system would make perfect sense and my bet is that this will come on the Phantom 5.
2016-3-24
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quickpoint
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terjetyl Posted at 2016-3-24 19:04
Flying within LOS has nothing to do with this. Many crashes happens within meters of the pilot, go ...

not sure if you read my whole post or just the first few lines.   with in meters of the pilot would mean the pilot them self would start setting off the warnings of the 360 detection  as well as anything else,    if this was to be truly effective as i said previously speed would be cut down drastically making most users just disable it.   

Agree it "Could" be very useful but most likely user disabled and common sense not applied.  
2016-3-24
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quaddron3
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Maybe that's for the P4 Pro that will cost more.
2016-3-25
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Geebax
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'In the future, just ask the community, we'll tell you which features are sorely needed.'

I love this. You would never get agreement on any new feature and there would be calls for all sorts of dumb features like digital zoom. It is so cute how this person just rattles off the statement, as if the DJI people have given no though whatsoever to what features are required, and if asked, he could have asimply solved it all in second. It is also apparent that he does not have a clue about thre difficulty of implementing these features either.

A 360 degree obstacle avoidance system would require sensors pointing in at least five directions to get the coverage, meaning ten cameras, requiring 5 vision procressing modules plus the attendant weight and power consumption. And the cost would make the whole thing completely unaffordable.
2016-3-25
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pi-inthesky
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Geebax Posted at 2016-3-25 09:39
'In the future, just ask the community, we'll tell you which features are sorely needed.'

I love th ...

Check out the DJI matrix
2016-3-25
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spiderbot.sb
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I disagree that consumers would never agree on anything.  They would agree on SOME things.

The technology is relatively cheap.  The processor in the P3 could probably handle 360 avoidance if the sensors were installed but then the flight time might decrease about 8-10% due to the added weight.

I'm sure DJI has a detailed feature release plan going out 10-15 years.  You'll have to pay to play.
2016-3-25
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terjetyl
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Was not aware of this one: http://www.dji.com/product/guidance, but it clearly shows it is possible and will probably be available at some later stage.

Since the yuneec H also has sensor avoidance but only front facing cameras I thought there could be limitations but when seeing this on the Matrix it does not seem to be the case.

The Yuneec avoidance tech seems to be clearly more advanced though so maybe DJI should partner up with Intel as well. There are so many use cases for this tech aside drones so it would make sense to partner up

2016-3-25
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DJI-Ken
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The P4 obstacle avoidance is totally new to the Phantom line and they thought about how it would mostly be used. And since you are mostly flying forward and when RTH activated it is also facing home so the front sensors take care of the majority of the situations.
One step at a time.
2016-3-25
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Geebax
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DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-3-26 00:40
The P4 obstacle avoidance is totally new to the Phantom line and they thought about how it would mos ...

Exactly ^

Yuneec might have teamed up with Intel, but more likely with Ascending Technologies, who are the real brains behind the system, and are owned by Intel. But so far they do not have a drone with obstacle avoidance available to buy, so how anyone can make the observation it is 'clearly more advanced' beggars belief. All that exists at present is a few demonstration aircraft that could be tricked up to fake the operation.

On the contrary, DJI have partnered with another company to help designed their obstacle avoidance technology, and it is in the market place where you can buy it, try it and make a judgement as to whether it is any good or not.

I know who I would be betting on.
2016-3-25
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Geebax
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spiderbot.sb Posted at 2016-3-25 22:45
I disagree that consumers would never agree on anything.  They would agree on SOME things.

The tech ...

'The processor in the P3 could probably handle 360 avoidance if the sensors were installed'

I doubt it. Optical object recognition is a very processor intensive operation, and you would be an idiot designer to slug your main processor with a function like that. The ideal solution would be a separate processor handling that task, leaving the main processor to handle flying the aircraft. And if you had a ring of 5 systems, which would be about the minimum needed to cover 360 degrees, then you would probably want more processors involved in the task.
2016-3-25
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terjetyl
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Geebax Posted at 2016-3-25 23:22
Exactly ^

Yuneec might have teamed up with Intel, but more likely with Ascending Technologies, wh ...

Do you have a name of the company DJI partnered up with or a link with information about their tech?
2016-3-25
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Geebax
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terjetyl Posted at 2016-3-26 10:18
Do you have a name of the company DJI partnered up with or a link with information about their tech ...

Sorry no. It was mentioned in a thread quite recently, but I do not remember the name.
2016-3-25
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DJI-Ken
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terjetyl Posted at 2016-3-26 07:18
Do you have a name of the company DJI partnered up with or a link with information about their tech ...

Is this what you were looking for?
http://www.movidius.com/news/mov ... my-to-dji-phantom-4
2016-3-25
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Geebax
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DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-3-26 14:42
Is this what you were looking for?
http://www.movidius.com/news/movidius-and-dji-bring-vision-base ...

Yes Ken, thank you. That is exactly the item I was thinking of.
2016-3-25
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DJI-Ken
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Geebax Posted at 2016-3-25 21:07
Yes Ken, thank you. That is exactly the item I was thinking of.

No problem buddy.
2016-3-25
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water_0106
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2016-3-26
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Sajid Shah
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LOL If They Add Everything In One Model :d How they sold others ...
2016-3-26
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terjetyl
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DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-3-26 04:42
Is this what you were looking for?
http://www.movidius.com/news/movidius-and-dji-bring-vision-base ...

Cool, so Matrix is using a different system than the Phantom 4. Is this by any chance Myriad 1 VPU?

As I understand it the Myriad 2 VPU takes info from both the 2 front facing sensors, bottom sensors and the camera itself computing active tracking and also computing obstacle avoidance. Is this correct?

How many VPU's are on the Phantom 4?
2016-3-26
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QuadBart
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And if they added that technology would you have paid the $2500 USD?  Probably not....

I'm sure you'd find something else to bitch about....
2016-3-26
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quaddron3
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They should add lidar in the future so it can fly reliably indoors.
2016-3-26
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spiderbot.sb
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Geebax Posted at 2016-3-25 17:25
'The processor in the P3 could probably handle 360 avoidance if the sensors were installed'

I doub ...

My guess is that these sensors provide nothing like 'object recognition'.  They are more like 'obstacle detection'.  I seriously doubt that the P4 avoidance system will keep your expensive quad out of a tree limb.

Sensor: Look out! There's an obstacle, dead ahead.
CPU: Try moving up.
Sensor: Obstacle still there.
CPU: Move up some more.
Sensor:  No obstacle.
CPU: Back to moving forward.

You're partially correct, however.  Whatever signal conditioning may be needed by the sensor is handled by a chip in the sensor so that sensor info would be transferred to the 'flight' processor in it's simplest form.  The flight processor could easily take this input along with all the other inputs, and with minor modification to the flight control algorithm, use it to calculate motor commands.  The additional transfer and calculation are not that difficult and at these processor speeds, would be near instantaneous.
2016-3-28
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Geebax
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spiderbot.sb Posted at 2016-3-28 22:42
My guess is that these sensors provide nothing like 'object recognition'.  They are more like 'obs ...

I doubt the processing is in the sensor at all, the sensor is a small camera of a similar type to that used in phones, and there are two required to perform the detection because it has already been stated that it is a 3D object detection process. The image processing is very likely to be done in a separate chip, this is why DJI partnered with Movidius, as they developed the chip and manufacture it.
2016-3-28
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Nink
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Geebax Posted at 2016-3-28 17:45
I doubt the processing is in the sensor at all, the sensor is a small camera of a similar type to  ...

You are probably correct Geebax to add additional directional sensing is probably beyond the processing capacity of the existing system  that is used for both Object Avoidance (OA) and for Object Recognition (OR) and this would require a secondary Visual Processing Unit (VPU), + 2 more cameras and unfortunately even a 3rd VPU maybe required  to converge both image processing systems. The fact a drone can travel in any or all of the 3 *  XYZ directions at a time means we would need a minimum of 3 VPU's working in conjunction with each other and probably a  4th VPU for aggregation of the other VPU's. The alternative would be to perform this work remotely in some form of cloud environment (either via an internet connection from device attachment at the controller or directly by providing data to the drone).

At best I think we will see a separate VPU will be introduced in a P4V or P5V model that will provide reverse OA capabilities but this will probably work separate to the  front facing object recognition and require a separate VPU chip and 2 more cameras.

Removing the Sonar sensors on the bottom and replacing these with cameras and a VPU is probably a good next step and eventually moving to full 6 sided VPU and object recognition is probably the final stage but I think we may have to wait until moores law catches up or we can off load the visual processing algorithms to cloud.
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Geebax
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Nink Posted at 2016-3-29 13:56
You are probably correct Geebax to add additional directional sensing is probably beyond the proce ...

Actually, there are already two cameras on the bottom of the P4 (there was one on the P3), but I think that have two cameras for each possible direction is probably impractical, I believe a different system will surface eventually that will do it more efficiently.
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Nink
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Geebax Posted at 2016-3-28 23:05
Actually, there are already two cameras on the bottom of the P4 (there was one on the P3), but I t ...

Low resolution cameras are light weight and you can always switch between them based on the direction you are traveling but a drone rarely travels in just 1 direction.  

I was surprised to see DJI was using a 3D camera overlay with object recognition instead of infrared triangulation to do their OA and OR calculations. The 3D low res cameras appears to provide a reduced  power consuming solution although the resolution is reduced (primesence is getting 1280 * 1024 resolution where DJI is only getting 320 * 240 with ~ 500 points depth perception.  I believe we need to see the benefit of both systems. Native camera resolution will obviously increase  although both systems are constrained by the fact infrared and 3D camera depth resolution are quadratic functions of depth, and resolution will decrease with increasing distance from the sensor.
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spiderbot.sb
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Geebax Posted at 2016-3-28 16:45
I doubt the processing is in the sensor at all, the sensor is a small camera of a similar type to  ...

I just looked at their web site and they do indeed have separate processors (which I doubt they manufacture).  This seems like overkill since the equivilent obstacle avoidance can be done with much cheaper ultrasonics or infrared.

And it looks like the chip is on the sensor assembly.

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quickpoint
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spiderbot.sb Posted at 2016-3-29 07:30
I just looked at their web site and they do indeed have separate processors (which I doubt they man ...

ultra sonic only works on large targets like the ground which is why its used for ground sensing.  thru air you will not pick up any small targets or be able to accurately get a proximity on them.  

   I really don't see how IR cameras do any useful.  heat signatures are useless and you will still need 2 of them do get proper depth information.    also Very low resolution sensors are still not that cheap.   and range is quite limited unless your spending big $$$$$

ultrasonic is for the most part useless unless your detecting a wall.  and infrared is completely not practical due to low resolution of detection.   it could in theory be done but will be well over 1k for IR sensors then additional processing power to build a 3d interpretation of the enviroment and the limits to the field of view.   not even factoring in power consumption that would be needed to process the inputs efficiently as its not in wide spread tech common practice   
2016-3-30
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dacofty
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Rain1dog Posted at 2016-3-1 19:27
I think the high level DJI engineers know way more than you about diminishing returns in relation to ...

Yes I agree about the diminishing returns butin the last few weeks how many videos have crept up showing crashing into trees and other stuff from below.  Top sensor would make more sense than a underbelly
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spiderbot.sb
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quickpoint Posted at 2016-3-30 20:12
ultra sonic only works on large targets like the ground which is why its used for ground sensing.  ...

Nice explanation.  You appear to be technically trained.

I know for a fact that infrared can be used for obstacle avoidance because I have done it.  Infrared is not about thermal imaging.  It's reflective.

I agree that ultrasonics would be more difficult in this environment but not impossible.  Also, if you're referring to ultrasonic ground sensing by a Phantom, that is not ultrasonics but is actually pattern matching which is why the VPS is useless over water.

As I said, this 3D imaging, if that is indeed what these sensors are doing, is overkill when either of the above methods appear to produce similar results.  The new sensors obviously have low resolution or they could keep you out of the branches, which doesn't seem to be the case.  In fact, it appears that the sensors 'see' an image that's not all that different from the 'globs' seen by ultrasonics or infrared.

What, exactly, are the limits of the new obstacle avoidance system?  I'd love to see the data on this.
2016-3-31
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quickpoint
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spiderbot.sb Posted at 2016-3-31 09:08
Nice explanation.  You appear to be technically trained.

I know for a fact that infrared can be u ...

i didn't say IR couldn't be used for it. just stating it would not be remotely cost effective with the quality of sensor you would need to the resolution required to work effectively.      IF an ir system used only advantage i could realistically see is use at night and low light.   

Not really here for a pissing contest just.  just tossing out points as accurate as my understanding.   im not saying take every word im saying as the absolute truth.  

as to exact limits i haven't dug to deeply into it other than flying around and testing with real world items.  picks up a tennis ball roughly 4-5 feet away moving.     
2016-3-31
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