How does Terrain Awareness treat transit legs?

I have used Terrain Awareness on a couple of test flights and it is pretty straightforward and works well. But I have a bigger mission planned for a farm in a relatively hilly location that will be more challenging. Farm has a mixture of pastures and forest on terrain that rises both directions from the long axis.

I have it all set up and with the chosen resolution and altitude and with Terrain Awareness on the grid will be well above the hills and trees. The grid looks good but I am not sure how the transit from home point to the start (green dot), the end of mission (red dot) back to home point, and any returns to home for batteries are handled.

For instance between the home point and the mission start green dot there is a knoll that rises about 30 meters early in the flight, then the path generally rises up to the mission start point. How can I be sure that the altitude on this transit is adequate? IOW, Does Terrain Awareness calculate and adjust these legs just like it does for the mission grid?

I am not at the location and I haven't uploaded the mission so I haven't seen the flight profile. Maybe it'll become clear when I do that?

On my other waypoint apps I'd just pop waypoints in at strategic points to ensure clearance. I don't think I can do that with Map Pilot.

Ray May 31, 2019 10:34

Official comment

Flight from the home point out to the data collection area is terrain aware. Flight home from the data collection is terrain aware as long as it is a part of the completed programmed mission. For multi battery terrain aware flights or times when the aircraft returns to home at an uncontrolled time, that flight is NOT terrain aware since it is using the aircraft's standard RTH method.

Here is the best news: You can test all of this on the simulator without leaving your desk.

https://support.dronesmadeeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/211468103-In-App-Simulator

Save the flight without the aircraft connected. Open the mission from the Mission Management screen. Connect the aircraft and turn on the simulator. You can test the return to home to see what it does while keeping an eye on the terrain plot for any close calls.

In general we always recommend taking off as high as you can get in the terrain you will be covering to keep any unintended return-to-home events from becoming return-to-home-into-a-hillside events.

Without seeing more about this location it is a little hard to help. Map Pilot will give you an option to raise your return to home height before takeoff. This is based on its knowledge of the surrounding area from flight path data only. It does not know if there is a giant cliff right next to it if the flight path didn't go over it.

Zane May 31, 2019 14:25

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4 comments

Thanks, guys, I saw the simulator button but had not tried it yet. I'll give that a shot later. I had not so much worried about hillsides in my scenario as terrain+plus trees on the return legs but since it uses the aircraft RTH settings I need to be. If RTH height is set to 60 meters and the aircraft was beginning RTH 200 feet up the hillside + AGL differential in Terrain Aware mode it would actually *descend* into the ground or trees. Yikes. I like the idea of just increasing the RTH height to a value above anything that might impinge if the aircraft limits (500 meters above home point) will cover it. I shouldn't need anything near that much.

Ray May 31, 2019 17:07 0 votes

See my comment in the simulator thread you linked. The simulator seems to have some things that still need to be worked out.

Ray May 31, 2019 18:08 0 votes

It is DJI's simulator but we use it for the majority of our testing. It should be able to do everything you are trying to easily.

Make sure you are doing the parts listed below the link...

Zane May 31, 2019 21:03 0 votes