Drone Loses Contact With Operator, Activates Return To Home, Crashes GoPro4 Into Rock
Oct 16, 2014
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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Video firm Every Angle Films had it in their pocket. They shot about one minute of a beautiful sun rise at Pinnacle Peak, Utah using a their new GoPro4 mounted on a DJI F550, naza v2 and an H3-3D gimbal (all and all a few thousands dollars worth of gear).
For some reasons the drone lost connection for a short time with the operator which triggered its Return To Home function. Sadly there was a big rock between the drone’s ‘current location’ and ‘home’ which the drone went straight into, falling all the way down.
While the GoPro seems intact, the team comments that:
The lens was damaged, good scratch on the bottom that was noticeable in later videos. Drone’s electronics were all fine, smashed up the arms and propellers which he has plenty of spares for. This isn’t his first time doing this, he did the same thing last winter and found the gopro a few months later still in perfect condition without the case. He has the video on his page, it’s pretty cool
They also comment that this is not the first time they were bitten by the Return To Home function. This I think makes the RTH feature almost useless unless it comes with built in collision avoidance.
[New GoPro 4 Black Destroyed…in 4k! via reddit]
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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27 responses to “Drone Loses Contact With Operator, Activates Return To Home, Crashes GoPro4 Into Rock”
Ooops!
Loses*
That “return to home” feature seems a little flawed… 0.o
Not if used properly, i.e, always maintain VLOS. These things don’t have crash detection…yet ; )
Apparently “home” was its mineral roots…
Great music :)
The RTH is useless as long as the operator makes a wrong configuration. Usually you should set the RTH height higher then possible obstacles on the way home. So if there is a 100m tall rock between your copter and you a RTH height of 50m isn’t the best idea ;)
Putting that big rock between him and the reciever and he still wonders what triggered the failsafe?!
gps pilots
I wouldn’t call that a “rock”……
Looses
outsch!
Looks like flying drones around is the new photography.
Maybe instead of letting the drone fall back to RTH, he should have programmed a safe gps path for it to return… around the rock.
I’ve seen this exact issue a couple times before. The operator is typically a good distance from a large object like this rock formation or a building, flies out and attempts to orbit the object, not thinking about the fact that when they go to the far side of the object they are placing a massive dense object between themselves and their quadcopter. The already weak signal has no chance of making it through the object so they end up losing connection both in the transmitter and the video downlink. I show a similar incident that happened in South Korea last summer, with the quadcopter just barley missing an apartment building in the video in this post: http://www.camerastupid.com/avoiding-phantom-quadcopter-drone-crashes-flyaways/
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This is why my RTH function first climbs 50m, then comes back.
You using a Naza system? If so, the RPA will only ascend to 20m if it’s under 20m (60ft) of the recorded home location’s altitude. Clearly this guy’s wasn’t.
Derek MacKinnon
That not in Arizona, That’s pinnacle peak in Eastern Utah. It is right down the road from where I grew up.
thanks for the heads up! fixed
That’s not Arizona, this is in Eastern Utah
That song reminds me of peggle..
Reminds me of home.
Hmmm… Naza RTH *never* flies as quick as that in my experience, always at a steady pace.
Haha you should learn with this thing first http://dronelifestyle.com/udi-u818a-quadcopter-review/
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