First this IS NOT a bashing session this is a search for answers and opinions so try to be respectful and courteous !
me personally i think the APM is capable of bringing my plane back and landing if the rx fell out ! do i think DIY should be responsible to implement it ? no but they are flying too so if we come up with a good proposal i,m sure they would try to make it happen !
this discussion is intended to come up with scenarios where your platform would go out of control ! and what we can do ! there should be a sister post Mitigating the chances of losing control .
i,ll start out . with Geofencing(here after to be referred to as GF) turned on i can't see how your platform can fly away so maybe GF should be turned on from default with a tiny box that you have to adjust to your area,platform,and conditions ? but not all of us carry a laptop to the field so maybe we should be able to save it and recall a few different versions for different fields and or conditions that way you could program it at home and go fly , but if you turn it on to far away from the place you selected as home it should lock up and beep or flash an error that way it wont try to fly 40mls back to your house (00) a safe configurable selectable autoland function tied too GF would be nice too.
at least this would protect the DIY community from litigation and put responsibility on the user and would save a newbie from a painful costly learning experience !!! feel free to poke holes in my ideas !
Questions leads to answers and isn't it wonderful we need not wait another second to make the APM better and if we do a good enough job maybe the government will force the AMA to use our product on all there large dangerous aircraft ! and would help in the UAV community acceptance into the sport
now have at it
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Sorry, guys there's already a thread talking about the legalities, can we not limit discussion here to technical issues?
Well, from a legal standpoint, I don't know of any RC equipment maker providing failsafe as a legal requirement nor can I see anyone being able to make the legal case that not providing it is grounds for negligence. But, I'm not a lawyer.
Technically, failsafe doesn't have to be based on loss of signal. Because we are an autopilot, loss of signal. We have an IMU that can tell us our acceleration and elevation. Basically, if we're heading for the ground at a high rate of acceleration, we're in trouble, loss of signal or not. We can add code that detect this situation and in the case of a x-copter, stop and hover at a safe height. For a plane, we can do the same with a loiter.
Great initiative this discussion. I have been trying to follow the other thread but it seemed to change directions all the time.
So how about doing as you suggest, enabling GF by default in a smallish box (say 100m x 100m x 100m) where point (50m,50m,0m) is the home location? I mean having a box "around home"?
Only problem I see with GF is that it needs a working GPS. The failsafe should be (somewhat) resilient to loss of GPS, which could be a gradual shutdown of the motors for multicopters and a complete throttle shutdown of throttle while keeping other servos for planes. Just my 5 cents..
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