Mavic 2 Vision System

It has long been clear that the DJI Mav­ic 2 drone is one of the safest and most reli­able drones in the world. The mod­el has the lat­est TapFly autopi­lot, which allows you to cre­ate routes with a flick of the wrist. If there is any obsta­cle in front of the quad­copter, the device will sim­ply fly around it and con­tin­ue to fly along a giv­en tra­jec­to­ry. The shoot­ing angle when fly­ing over an obsta­cle will be saved. Today we will talk more about the DJI Mav­ic 2 unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle.

Technical Details

The drone has a cam­era on a hydro­scop­ic sus­pen­sion, but it is far from the only one. There is also one cam­era on each side of the quad­copter, as well as two in the nose, tail and bot­tom. Such a large num­ber of cam­eras allows you to deter­mine as accu­rate­ly as pos­si­ble how much is left before the obsta­cle. The detec­tion accu­ra­cy can be up to cen­time­ters. The cen­tral proces­sor of the drone process­es the received infor­ma­tion in moments, which allows you to quick­ly deter­mine the most appro­pri­ate route.

The great­est dan­ger to an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle is pre­sent­ed by obsta­cles from above and below, because such obsta­cles are not always vis­i­ble through the main cam­era. To detect such obsta­cles, spe­cial IR sen­sors are used that can detect an object at a dis­tance of up to 11 meters. There is also an aux­il­iary sys­tem in the form of a bot­tom light, which is espe­cial­ly use­ful if the flight is car­ried out in poor light, i.e. twi­light or in the shade of tall build­ings.

Restrictions

While the Mav­ic 2 has impres­sive specs, it’s not all-pow­er­ful. For exam­ple, the col­li­sion avoid­ance sys­tem is only capa­ble of oper­at­ing at speeds up to 50 km per hour in for­ward move­ment and up to 42 km per hour in reverse. There are also “dead zones” for sen­sors locat­ed in the diag­o­nal planes of the quad­copter. If you want the drone to devel­op max­i­mum speed, then it is bet­ter to prac­tice well before that.

It is worth not­ing that the shape and size of the obsta­cle are very impor­tant. Drone sen­sors can eas­i­ly rec­og­nize tree poles and trunks, but leaves and wires can be dif­fi­cult to rec­og­nize. If you decide to oper­ate drones in the for­est or near pow­er lines, then you should exer­cise extra cau­tion.

Movies have taught us that a human can fool a robot by impro­vis­ing. For you to under­stand, we will give an exam­ple. Let’s com­pare how a drone behaves near a snow-white glossy wall of a house or a mat­te black car. If we talk about the first option, then the lev­el of light reflec­tion is very high, and in the sec­ond sit­u­a­tion it is very low. And the dan­ger can come from moth­er nature. The threat may be the smooth sur­face of a lake, a tur­bu­lent riv­er, or a snow-cov­ered plain.

The weath­er can also cause a lot of trou­ble for the own­er of a quadro­copter. The fact is that at high humid­i­ty, water drops can con­dense on the cam­era lens­es, which, as you under­stand, seri­ous­ly lim­its the view. And fog is a big dan­ger. It is worth famil­iar­iz­ing your­self with the weath­er before you go to launch an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle.

Now let’s talk a lit­tle about flight con­di­tions. The obsta­cle detec­tion sys­tem works best at a height of 2–11 meters above the ground. If the copter is below 2 meters, then the sys­tem is able to “skip” indi­vid­ual irreg­u­lar­i­ties, espe­cial­ly at high speeds. If the drone is high­er than 11 meters above the ground, then the IR sen­sors will sim­ply lose con­tact with the sur­face.

How to deal with it?

Of course, it may seem that the Mav­ic 2 drone is eas­i­ly “lost” in any sit­u­a­tion, but this is absolute­ly not the case. For starters, rain and fog do not hap­pen that often, and fly­ing in such weath­er is pro­hib­it­ed by the instruc­tions. And per­fect­ly black and white sur­faces are not so com­mon in real life. In addi­tion, the safe­ty and sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tems are not turned off com­plete­ly — they become less effec­tive. Even then, you can fly the drone smooth­ly and land gen­tly on the ground.

If you pay atten­tion to the instruc­tions, then it says that you should be extreme­ly care­ful in such a sit­u­a­tion. Do not turn on the sport mode, do not make sharp dan­ger­ous maneu­vers near obsta­cles and care­ful­ly climb. This applies not only to begin­ners, but also to expe­ri­enced own­ers of unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles.

Do not for­get that the device needs to be prop­er­ly looked after. Cam­era lens­es, lights, and IR sen­sors should be checked reg­u­lar­ly before fly­ing the air­craft. They must be free of dust, dirt or water. You can wipe all these sur­faces with a soft cloth, such as microfiber. Nev­er use harsh chem­i­cals when clean­ing parts of the quad­copter.

If the unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle sud­den­ly encoun­ters an obsta­cle, then you will need to re-cal­i­brate the device. Use the DJI Assis­tant 2 app. To con­fig­ure the sen­sors, you need to raise the quad­copter in the air and point the cam­era of your smart­phone at it. Then lev­el the machine and fix it in this posi­tion. This action must be done for all review sys­tems. If it so hap­pened that the sen­sors are dam­aged, then you need to turn off the drone, and then repair it. Restora­tion of an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle should be trust­ed by expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als from DJI.

Conclusion

The secu­ri­ty sys­tem is very impor­tant for a quad­copter. It will allow your device to avoid a lot of trou­ble. Nat­u­ral­ly, the pos­si­bil­i­ties of this sys­tem are not unlim­it­ed. Always oper­ate the drone with care and fol­low the instruc­tions.