How the Fly Home Feature Works on DJI Quadcopters

Learn how the DJI Return to Home (RTH) fea­ture works and why it is invalu­able to every drone pilot.

The DJI Return Home fea­ture is a very impor­tant safe­ty fea­ture to help you return your drone to its take­off point and find a land­ing spot. Read the descrip­tion below to under­stand how it works and what ben­e­fits you can get from using it.

There are 3 modes of return to the takeoff point

1. Smart RTH (smart mode)
   This mode allows the user to com­mand the air­craft to return to its take­off point sim­ply by press­ing the RTH but­ton on the remote con­trol or in the DJI Go 4 app.
2. Low Bat­tery RTH (low bat­tery return)
   When the air­craft bat­tery lev­el drops to the set val­ue, a mes­sage appears in the DJI Go 4 app and the air­craft begins to return to the take­off point.
3. Fail­safe RTH (return on loss of con­nec­tion)
   This mode will return the drone to the take­off point in case of loss of sig­nal with the remote con­trol or Wi-Fi net­work (when using a smart­phone as a remote con­trol).

So how does Return to Takeoff (RTH) mode work?

DJI drones remem­ber take­off posi­tion when receiv­ing sig­nals from 4 or more GPS satel­lites. The drone con­stant­ly ana­lyzes its posi­tion sig­nals in real time thanks to GPS coor­di­nates and uses a com­pass to assist in return­ing home.

If some­thing is inter­fer­ing with the GPS or com­pass, Return Home may not work accu­rate­ly. To ensure an accu­rate return to the take­off point, please fly in an open area where there is no inter­fer­ence and remem­ber to update the take­off point before each flight.*

* Be aware that urban areas with many tall build­ings may inter­fere with GPS sig­nals. Mag­net­ic fields, pow­er lines, met­al struc­tures and struc­tures can also affect the oper­a­tion of the com­pass.

Drone pre-flight preparation.

When the air­craft enters Fail­safe RTH mode, you will not be able to con­trol obsta­cle avoid­ance. There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to set the appro­pri­ate return alti­tude in the DJI GO 4 app so that the air­craft will reach the cor­rect alti­tude before return­ing. At a high­er lev­el, the air­craft will be able to avoid most obsta­cles, which is a sim­ple and effec­tive mea­sure to make return safer.*

* If the air­craft’s cur­rent alti­tude is high­er than the one set in the DJI Go 4 app, it will con­tin­ue fly­ing at that alti­tude.

When return­ing to the take­off point, the air­craft can detect obsta­cles thanks to cam­eras (visu­al sen­sors) to fly high­er and avoid an acci­dent.*

* Cam­eras (visu­al sen­sors) can only detect obsta­cles with a clear struc­ture and good light­ing. Please note that Mav­ic Pro, Mav­ic Air, and Spark are not equipped with sen­sors on top.

Smart Return Modes (Intellegent RTH)

Fail­safe RTH mode

The air­craft will return to its take­off point using the flight path and attempt to re-estab­lish com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the con­troller as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to allow the user to con­trol the return process.*

* The air­craft will not use the flight path when it is in oth­er return home modes. In oth­er modes, the short­est return path is select­ed. Please note that the DJI Spark always flies the short­est path in any RTH mode.

Smart Return to Home (Smart RTH)

When the air­craft is hov­er­ing over the take­off point, Land­ing Pro­tec­tion Mode is acti­vat­ed, which auto­mat­i­cal­ly acti­vates the low­er sen­sors to deter­mine if the sur­face is suit­able for land­ing. If the sur­face is not suit­able, the air­craft will hov­er wait­ing for the user’s com­mand.*

* Note: Spark can only detect the pres­ence of water and can­not detect flat or oth­er sur­faces.

In addi­tion, make sure there is ade­quate light­ing for sys­tem oper­a­tion dur­ing take­off and land­ing.*

* Please note that the Inspire 2 does not have the Pre­ci­sion Fit fea­ture.

Return Home (RTH)

While the return home mode is in oper­a­tion, you can con­tin­ue shoot­ing after mak­ing sure it is safe.

No mat­ter where your adven­ture takes you, fol­low these sim­ple steps to act con­fi­dent­ly in any sit­u­a­tion.

Take the first step with a DJI drone today!