Failsafes
When flying a drone, it is important to ensure the safety of it as well as its surrounding environment. The flight controller is designed to detect when the drone encounters a problem or malfunctions and control the drone appropriately in response to this emergency. The failsafe modes can be configured for RC loss, battery exhaustion and geofence breach.
Failsafe Actions
Each failsafe action can be configured as the response per trigger by navigating to the relevant page as given below:
Web Interface: Settings > Commander > Failsafe
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Land: When a failsafe is triggered and this option is chosen as the failsafe action, the drone lands in a controlled manner, starting from its current flying position.
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Return to Home and Land: If triggered, the failsafe action leads the drone to return to its identified home position, usually where it was armed. Upon triggering, the drone first climbs or descends to the configured return altitude, then flies back to the home position while maintaining this altitude. The return altitude can be configured under the RTL section of the settings.
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Kill: It causes the drone to be killed immediately upon a failsafe being triggered by stopping all the motors. This action is typically given the lowest priority during the configuration of failsafes and is only allowed for RC Loss trigger.
Failsafe Triggers
RC Loss
RC loss is considered to occur when the connection between the drone and the RC stops working during any flight and the pilot has no control of the drone. In this scenario, the drone must be safely brought to the ground. In case this failsafe is triggered, the drone can be configured to Land, RTL or Kill.
Battery Exhaustion
The low, critical, and emergency battery levels are defined by navigating in the web interface as seen below. Different actions take place at different battery levels.
Web Interface: Settings > System Monitor > Battery
When low battery level is reached, the drone is not allowed to arm until the battery is above this level once more. Additionally, the Dashboard of the web interface shows a warning indicating low battery level.
If the critical battery level is reached while flying, the drone's failsafe is triggered and one of the configured failsafe action is performed.
If the emergency battery level is reached while flying, the drone will immediately enter a failsafe land mode. This will cause the drone to land at its current lateral position, regardless of the configured failsafe action.
Geofence Breach
Geofences in the Reflex are defined by a cylindrical space in three dimensions. The height and radius of this cylinder can be configured in the settings. Following this, the failsafe action can be chosen as either the Land function or the RTL function. If the drone then breaches this geofence by crossing its boundaries, the failsafe would be triggered and, the chosen failsafe action would be carried out.
Web Interface: Settings > Commander > Failsafe > GeoFencing
Take-off Attitude
A takeoff attitude failsafe may be configured so that if the Reflex detects aggressive attitude changes during takeoff (which could be due to faulty configuration), the Reflex will automatically kill the motors for safety reasons. This can be configured here:
Web Interface: Settings > Commander > Failsafe > Takeoff Attitude Failsafe