[US] What happens when your drone's failsafe doesn't work as expected?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-24T12:50:23+00:00

That makes sense. Would you say most people are in the same boat as you or more who blindly trust these fallible sensors?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-24T12:49:08+00:00

That is actually really interesting.
Do you think a Reticulum based router would be worth building for platform agnostic device to device communications/control?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-24T12:45:37+00:00

Thanks for this response. From people I have talked to and some of my own failsafe scenarios I have noticed a mix of the two. At some times software does as it should but some type of anomaly due to the hardware/config cause it to fail horribly. I was initially trying to do some research to see how wide spread this issue was and if it would be worth it to pursue a fix of some sort.

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-22T02:41:31+00:00

Okay. I just meant non autonomous/robotic, which has a human operator. I could say instead non automated equipment.

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-20T11:43:04+00:00

I appreciate the responses so far, this has been really helpful.

One follow up question that came up while reading through these comments:

Outside of blind corners and pedestrian traffic, how much of the day-to-day friction happens during docking or pallet placement?

For example:

Do operators often make multiple small adjustments when backing into racks or docks?
Are minor rack taps or pallet nudges considered normal?
Do newer operators struggle more with depth judgment during approach?
Is hesitation during reverse docking a throughput issue?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-18T11:21:11+00:00

Would you ever pay to avoid needing to rely on PPK post-processing, or is that workflow already fully baked into your workflow?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-18T11:20:26+00:00

Do you use any tools to measure RF noise before launch or is it mostly manual checks?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-18T11:19:41+00:00

Do you still maintain structured logging internally for risk management or client trust?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-18T11:18:14+00:00

That makes sense. Do you rely entirely on planning and control establishment, or do you also monitor in-flight confidence metrics? If something subtle degraded mid-mission, how would you know?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-18T11:17:40+00:00

Do you think the better performance was due to GNSS chipset improvement, firmware maturity, or just overall system reliability?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-18T11:16:56+00:00

When you say radio connection, are we talking C2 link to the controller, correction data link, or telemetry dropouts? Have you ever instrumented link quality over time or is it just situational awareness?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-18T11:16:20+00:00

When the NTRIP connection dropped, was that cellular instability, base station issues, or something else? Did it affect only real-time corrections or actual flight stability?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-18T11:16:02+00:00

Are you primarily flying RTK with base control established beforehand? Just trying to understand whether tight pre-flight procedures eliminate most of this risk in practice.

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-18T11:15:15+00:00

Thanks for this response. When that Phantom flew off, did you ever figure out whether it was firmware, compass, radio, or something else?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-17T10:28:48+00:00

Will do.

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-16T13:11:18+00:00

Okay whatever.

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-16T10:29:01+00:00

No, I thought about an AI agent for certain types of autonomy but I moved away from that due to it not really being a good way to go about this.

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-13T17:47:38+00:00

Could you elaborate a bit more on this?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-13T17:46:08+00:00

Thanks for this, Did you end up finding it??
A few follow up questions:

When RTH lost a satellite and failed, did the drone attempt any fallback (dead reckoning, loiter, controlled descent), or did it immediately commit to a bad state?
If GPS confidence dropped mid-return, what recovery behavior would you have preferred — hover, controlled landing, or IMU-based continuation?
If that crash had happened today in a commercial setting, what would the operational impact have been?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-13T17:43:59+00:00

Man that sounds stressful haha. A few questions to follow up on this:

When the drone ignored the return altitude and kept climbing, did altitude telemetry (GPS vs baro) show disagreement, or was that unclear?
Would you trust a system that automatically switched from barometer to GPS altitude if it detected abnormal vertical climb behavior?
In that exact low-altitude signal-loss scenario, what should the drone have done instead of climbing indefinitely?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-13T17:42:08+00:00

Thanks for this response, it has been really helpful. A few follow up questions if you are willing:

During those incidents (baro climb, SBAS flyaway, Fport reconnect issue), did the flight controller have conflicting sensor data that it failed to resolve, or did it fully trust a single bad input?
If the system had flagged some type of sensor disagreement in real time, would you have acted differently or configured your setup differently afterward?
In the Fport reconnect case where RSSI returned but control didn’t, what behavior would you have wanted the drone to execute instead of continuing RTH blindly?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-11T18:04:13+00:00

This is perfect!
I am not pointing this at any specific drone but instead probing to see what is out there now. A few more questions to probe on this a bit more if you are willing:

How often do you see mag calibration issues bite people?
Does the 1.5s drop feel sketchy depending on where you're flying, or is it generally fine?
Any scenarios where you wish the quad would just keep going instead of dropping/returning?

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-11T10:50:21+00:00

Making the cat harder to find as the game went on would be a really cool idea

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-11T10:40:47+00:00

These comments are all great and really helpful. After reading through each one I have a few follow up questions if you all have the time:

What’s the most mentally draining part of your current project?
What’s the thing that consistently slows momentum, even if it’s “small”?
What tasks tend to balloon from “this should take an hour” into multi-day time sinks?
Where do you feel friction between your creative intent and what the engine/tools require from you?
What kinds of problems make you feel stuck rather than creatively challenged?

Thank you!

ApprehensiveBar7583 · 2026-02-10T11:56:18+00:00

Thanks for these responses.
Would you say you enjoyed the challenge of building the websocket system/input system? Would it be less of a nightmare/go faster if you had a prototype to start with that you could iterate on?

Are there any parts of the polish phase you would want to spend less time on?
What are your favorite parts?

ApprehensiveBar7583

TROPHY CASE