Swiss Post Suspends Drone Delivery Service After Second Crash

Re:Swiss Post Suspends Drone Delivery Service After Second C... by michaelt on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @07:54AM (#20624309)

  If it were a winged drone you'd at
  least have a chance to glide it to
  a safe spot, but a drone

The last time I looked at the retail quadcopter/RC plane market, when faced with a communications failure most of the quadcopters would return to the launch point and safely land. None of the RC planes had such a function - most seemed to just turn off the propeller and glide in whatever direction they were facing at the time.

Seemed to me the quadcopter response to communication failures was a much safer one. Is this still the case? It was quite some time ago.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Swiss Post Suspends Drone Delivery Service After Second C... by dsfyu404ed on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @08:29AM (#20624505)

>The last time I looked at the retail quadcopter/RC plane market, when faced with a communications failure most of the quadcopters would return to the launch point and safely land. None of the RC planes had such a function - most seemed to just turn off the propeller and glide in whatever direction they were facing at the time.

Once you have a quadcopter you've got enough digital hardware and software that adding "return to base" is basically free since it's just an additional software routeine.

RC planes don't already have the required hardware/software to implement a return to base feature because they don't need it and of course nobody is going to greatly increase the cost and complexity of the product just to add that one feature.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Swiss Post Suspends Drone Delivery Service After Second C... by 83 on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @11:10AM (#20625837)

A handful of the quad controllers also support planes. I have multiple RC planes with that functionality - it adds a little complexity but not a ton.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Swiss Post Suspends Drone Delivery Service After Second C... by shkkmo on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @10:19AM (#20625351)

> The last time I looked at the retail quadcopter/RC plane market, when faced with a communications failure most of the quadcopters would return to the launch point and safely land.

That isn't really accurate at all.

> https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-t1000fc-auto-pilot-syste...

>https://www.amazon.com/Parrot-Disco-FPV-minutes-goggles/dp/B...

Very few micro and mini quads have this functionality.

Return To Home functionality is common any medium and larger RC aircraft intended for FPV flying.

Often fixed wing RC with RTH functionality won't attempt to land, it return to home and enter a circular holding pattern until contact is re-established or the battery fails.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Swiss Post Suspends Drone Delivery Service After Second C... by raxxorrax on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @10:37AM (#20625523)

I tested some quadcopters and all had the behavior to land immediately on connection loss, no matter what is below them. Better not have something like that happening above a pond. So no automatic navigating to a starting point. It has been a few years, maybe that changed.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Swiss Post Suspends Drone Delivery Service After Second C... by cronix on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @11:13AM (#20625862)

3D Robotics Solo has that feature (return to launch), but that was 5 years ago now. You could also set it so when the battery started to get too low it would return home as well. But that was one of the most advanced hobby drones in terms of software that existed at the time. DJI now uses it as well. It's all built into ardupilot. http://ardupilot.org/

[ Parent | on HN ]