News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ultrasound can cause anomalies in the Xiaomi MI5S Plus gy... by falcolas on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @10:19AM (#17549892)
All drones do use gyros - they couldn't remain level without having rotational awareness. Accelerometers are the sensors which are optional.

The earliest drones used actual model helicopter gyros, the current generation have those sensors soldered onto the control boards.

Re:Ultrasound can cause anomalies in the Xiaomi MI5S Plus gy... by StavrosK on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @10:25AM (#17549923)
Not all drones remain level. Racing drones rely on operator input to remain level (it's called acro mode).
Re:Ultrasound can cause anomalies in the Xiaomi MI5S Plus gy... by falcolas on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @11:10AM (#17550200)
The PID cycle that controls the rotors, even on racing drones, relies on the gyros to provide the feedback potion of the PID loop. That feedback is "what is the current yaw, pitch, and roll of the drone".

Even in acro mode (which is more accurately defined as "the sticks determine the yaw, pitch and roll rotational velocities"), the gyros are used to measure the actual rate of rotation so it can be matched against the requested rotational velocity.

Positional stabilization, something you see more in the higher end drones, have an additional PID loop that takes input from the gyros, accelerometers and even GPS to determine the input to the underlying control PID loop.

Re:Ultrasound can cause anomalies in the Xiaomi MI5S Plus gy... by detaro on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @11:12AM (#17550212)
And (roughly) Acro mode needs a gyro to control that the rotation matches the user request, whereas self-leveling needs an accelerometer too to figure out where "down" is.