As far as I can tell, a copter or plane using UCGS will fly directly into a hill if return home or joystick control is used. I had expected it would follow terrain as it does when creating an initial waypoint or survey. This is a serious risk, especially for flights in complex terrain that UGCS is supposed to be the best in! Basically, in terms of automated failsafes it is the same risk as the DJI return home button on the flight controller. Am I wrong?
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>> B) Would be great if the click to go feature calculated the terrain following safe route to that point and uploaded the required waypoints, versus just going straight (through hills, etc..).
We did something like this for one of our customers in custom UgCS version. We didn't decided to add this to standard version yet because it reloads current mission and can produce lot of side effects. Especialy if you want to resume original mission execution...
>> C) I created such a model for the Matrice 600 based on data I found on the internet, and it is below if useful.
It's interesting how relevant will be results. There are lot of other parameters which will change flight time - temperature, wind gusts, age and state of batteries..
Flight profile also has huge influence on maximum distance. If you have lot of waypoints and drone should stop in waypoints, it will spend time to slow down and accelerate.
A) Ok, great. I was hoping to find the functionality where I could select a waypoint to go to in a mission (skipping others), if for example I wanted to initiate a landing sequence or such.
B) Would be great if the click to go feature calculated the terrain following safe route to that point and uploaded the required waypoints, versus just going straight (through hills, etc..).
C) I created such a model for the Matrice 600 based on data I found on the internet, and it is below if useful.
My best attempt to derive a Matrice 600 flight time and distance vs. payload and speed equation:
Inputs:
Speed (m/s): 12
Payload (kg): 2.5
% max time = 0.8997619 - 0.0892857*Payload + 0.0095238*(Payload-3)^2
Flight time (min) = (32.519376 - 0.6711334*Speed + 0.0343145*(Speed-8.93333)^2)*"% Max"
Distance (km) = ("Speed"*60*"flight time")/1000
which for this example is outputs:
Outputs:
% = 0.68
Flight time (min) = 16.83
Distance (km) = 12.12
* assumes horizontal movement only. Up would reduce this lots, and down would increase this somewhat (but less than up).
Method was to fit an equation to the data from the figure on M600 minutes per m/s available at:
https://airdata.com/blog/2017/drone-flight-stats-part-1
And combine with another equation from the DJI M600 Specs website regarding flight times vs. payload available at:
http://bestdroneforthejob.com/drone-reviews/dji-matrice-600/
My conclusion from this study (and why I bothered) was to see if there was an optimal speed at which to conduct mapping surveys with a 2.5 kg payload. The conclusion is that faster is basically better to the point that my sensor is not getting the ground returns required (it is a lidar, so slower = more points, faster = less points). So, I'm going with the values above. Only testing will show if these values are at all realistic.
Hi,
>> 1) Does the simulator (and DJI intelligent battery feature?) incorporate payload weight and speed into the battery life calculation during flights?
No. Our flight time estimator is quite rough. To take in account payload weight and speed it's necessary to have precise mathematical model of aircraft, including aerodynamical. I never saw such estimator for drones.
Practical precision of our estimator is around 20%.
>> 2) How does one restart a long mission in UCGS after it being interrupted due to low battery or other RTL?
In this menu you can select start point
During the flight (with real drone) you will see passed waypoints in vehicle log, this will help to decide from which waypoint you will need to start your mission again.
Please note that to use this function with m600 you need to wait UgCS 2.11 release. Recently one of our customers found bug here and it will be fixed in 2.11.
Hi Alex,
1) Does the simulator (and DJI intelligent battery feature?) incorporate payload weight and speed into the battery life calculation during flights?
2) How does one restart a long mission in UCGS after it being interrupted due to low battery or other RTL?
Thanks
Eben
Thank you Edward! This approach would work for simple go and return missions, but you can imagine a long loop - say around a mountain - with a grid mapping pattern in the middle, so in this case a reverse route RTL would be result in battery failure I think if it was well into the route when 'return home' was triggered? Something like 'terrain following' in Arduplane would solve it as it then includes terrain AGL in the RTL flight pattern (and/or getting the guidance system to work on the Matrice 600 A3 - like a Phantom 4, then it would never crash into anything pretty much! But, alas, still not compatible...
Alexey Dobrovolskiy said:
>> 1) Does setting 'emergency return height' in UGCS update the parameter that is internal to the DJI Matrice 600 (i.e., that is uses when it triggers its battery failsafe), OR does it just use that value when you click the 'return home' button in UGCS. If the 2nd, then it would be critical for me to update both of the RTH altitude values once I defined how high I would need to be to fly over any terrain between the mission waypoints and home during BVLOS flights.
Yes, UgCS updates "Emergency return altitude" in m600, so it should be used by it in case if RTH will be triggered automatically.
Please note that DJI often changes they SDK and firmware behaviour, so in case of so expensive equipment I recommend to check all vital functions in safe conditions. And never update firmware and software without significant reason. Sorry that I remind this again..
I can't check this right now, but I think that you can check this using DJI GO app. Set some "Emergency return altitude" in UgCS, upload route to you vehicle, kill UgCS for DJI app, start DJI Go and check parameters. DJI GO should show current value.
>> 2) The other values in parameters for a vehicle are just used in modifying or providing warnings for missions that users create in UGCS, but not actually altered for the aircraft. I.e., there is no update of DJI GO App or DJI Matrice 600 parameters by UGCS of any kind - it just feeds waypoints and provides feedback via the computer.
"Action on loss of RC" in route parameters also will be updated in autopilot.
Other parameters in vehicle profile used only by UgCS (in case of DJI).
>> 3) Is there anyway you can think of to use 1 computer to connect to both my android UGCS app (so I can use my laptop as a ground station), AND another wifi network (is how my LiDAR transmits live point clouds)? Or is the only solution to purchase an additional laptop or windows tablet to functional as my UGCS ground station?
You can use USB WiFi adapter to connect laptop to both WiFi networks. But may be will be more convenient to use small WiFi AP and connect all equipment to single network? We often use something like this - http://www.dlink.com/uk/en/products/dwr-932-4g-lte-mobile-wi-fi-hot... - in the field.
Eben uses dji m600...
Edward Sellars said:
Backtracks the rtl along the same path so no mucking around with altitudes. Should be ground software independent.
What vehicles are you flying with and what hardware/stacks?
Sorry so many questions. As you said expensive hardware and first flight in a week. You can see what we are planning to fly at: www.gatoreye.org if you are curious.
1) Does setting 'emergency return height' in UGCS update the parameter that is internal to the DJI Matrice 600 (i.e., that is uses when it triggers its battery failsafe), OR does it just use that value when you click the 'return home' button in UGCS. If the 2nd, then it would be critical for me to update both of the RTH altitude values once I defined how high I would need to be to fly over any terrain between the mission waypoints and home during BVLOS flights.
2) The other values in parameters for a vehicle are just used in modifying or providing warnings for missions that users create in UGCS, but not actually altered for the aircraft. I.e., there is no update of DJI GO App or DJI Matrice 600 parameters by UGCS of any kind - it just feeds waypoints and provides feedback via the computer.
3) Is there anyway you can think of to use 1 computer to connect to both my android UGCS app (so I can use my laptop as a ground station), AND another wifi network (is how my LiDAR transmits live point clouds)? Or is the only solution to purchase an additional laptop or windows tablet to functional as my UGCS ground station?
Thanks!
UgCS will not trigger failsafes. Battery levels in vehicle profile define color of indicator in UgCS and also when UgCS will issue textual warnings on the screen.
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