AUTO/RTL OA/Vertical bendy ruler behaviour in absence of proximity data

ArduCopter Copter 4.2
1

I am wondering what happens if a drone in AUTO (or RTL) mode with obstacle avoidance turned on (using vertical bendy ruler) stops getting proximity data sent to it.

Our set up sends proximity data using a mavlink message so I want to be sure that if data is no longer sent for some reason of our fault there is no unexpected behavior. Does it just operate as normal?

I am interested in particular in its behavior in RTL in absence of proximity data being sent.

I know it won’t pass prearm, I am meaning if it HAD proximity data, and it now does not now that it is flying around in AUTO/RTL.

Assume on the most current stable Copter version.

Thanks

2

Hello @lachlan1

I am not 100% sure of this… but from what I studied from the OA system in ardupilot, as soon as you lose your proximity sensor, it will just stop feeding OA thread with new data, so, from what I understand, it should continue flying with no problem (of course crashing if travelling towards an unseen obstacle…).

In order to assure this, the better way is to run SITL with Airsim and replicate this case to assure it won’t result in expected behaviours.