Copter RTL with terrain follow?

ArduCopter Copter 4.0
1

Looks to me that PLANE will follow terrain when doing a failsafe RTL:

https://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/common-terrain-following.html

But COPTER will not:

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/terrain-following.html

Is that true?

If so, I see a possibly dangerous circumstance where:

I fly up the side of a hill, staying below 400 AGL, but going perhaps far above 400 AGL reference the home point…let’s just use 1000 feet above the home for this example.

Then I lose radio contact.

As I understand copter RTL, it will then fly out away from the hill, staying at 1000 feet above the home point, putting it WAY above the legal altitude as soon as it flies away from the hill.

So…

It would be great if I could tell copter RTL to terrain follow using an onboard database of terrain…is this possible?

And another question…what about Smart RTL? I know it traces the longitudinal path back to home, but does it also follow altitude? That wasn’t clear on the wiki page.

Thanks…

2

OK…yeesh…nevermind…I figured it out after more research. Yes, Smart RTL will climb/descend to follow the breadcrumbs back home.

Watched this video:

Thanks…

1 Like