Hello all, I’m new to the forum and a relatively new pilot, as I’ve had my P4 advanced only for a few months.
Unfortunately, I am writing after a total loss crash in which my drone ended up on the steep side of an unreachable coastal cliff. I would appreciate if someone more expert than me could give me some honest feedback on whether the accident was my fault (as DJI claims) or due to a malfunctioning of the RTH routine, as it is my strong belief.
I uploaded the flight log with this post and made it available also under Crash log - Google Drive
Summarizing briefly, I was driving the P4 advanced along a tall coastal cliff. It was a beautiful day, with great visibility, and the GPS signal was always present. After arriving at the visible edge of the cliff, curious to see what was on the other side, I sent the drone behind the edge. As expected, shortly thereafter the remote lost connection and the failsafe RTH routine was automatically launched. I was not too overly concerned as there was plenty of open space to fly back. What happened afterwards, however, left me speechless. In a situation in which the drone had a tall cliff on one side, but was completely open on all the others, the RTH, after controlling it for 53s, achieved the brilliant result of crashing it against the cliff. That made me speechless for a couple of reasons: with all obstacle avoidance tools the P4 advanced has, the RTH routine could not detect that the path was free in all directions but one, where there was a giant wall. Secondly, in the presence of good GPS signal, it could have simply adopted the dumb strategy of flying the outbound path backwards.
Anyway, the reply I got from DJI was in my opinion pure BS: the accident is my fault because
a) I should only fly in “open zones” and not in “improper environments” (not sure what’s more open than the coastline along the sea)
and
b) “the vision system cannot work perfectly” in situations with “dark light” and “complex topography”. It was around noon, full daylight, and I described above how complex the topography was, which will be visible clearly in the flight log.
Any feedback would be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance,
Marco
Unfortunately, I am writing after a total loss crash in which my drone ended up on the steep side of an unreachable coastal cliff. I would appreciate if someone more expert than me could give me some honest feedback on whether the accident was my fault (as DJI claims) or due to a malfunctioning of the RTH routine, as it is my strong belief.
I uploaded the flight log with this post and made it available also under Crash log - Google Drive
Summarizing briefly, I was driving the P4 advanced along a tall coastal cliff. It was a beautiful day, with great visibility, and the GPS signal was always present. After arriving at the visible edge of the cliff, curious to see what was on the other side, I sent the drone behind the edge. As expected, shortly thereafter the remote lost connection and the failsafe RTH routine was automatically launched. I was not too overly concerned as there was plenty of open space to fly back. What happened afterwards, however, left me speechless. In a situation in which the drone had a tall cliff on one side, but was completely open on all the others, the RTH, after controlling it for 53s, achieved the brilliant result of crashing it against the cliff. That made me speechless for a couple of reasons: with all obstacle avoidance tools the P4 advanced has, the RTH routine could not detect that the path was free in all directions but one, where there was a giant wall. Secondly, in the presence of good GPS signal, it could have simply adopted the dumb strategy of flying the outbound path backwards.
Anyway, the reply I got from DJI was in my opinion pure BS: the accident is my fault because
a) I should only fly in “open zones” and not in “improper environments” (not sure what’s more open than the coastline along the sea)
and
b) “the vision system cannot work perfectly” in situations with “dark light” and “complex topography”. It was around noon, full daylight, and I described above how complex the topography was, which will be visible clearly in the flight log.
Any feedback would be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance,
Marco