Failure Management

Archive
1

I was out flying last evening and there were many bugs in the air. I was thinking “what will happen of a bug pits the airspeed port and blocks it”. Will it think the airspeed went to 0 and dive into the ground? Thin I was thinking that the firmware probably has built in logic to contend with all kinds of failures. I am not a code expert so looking at the code would not help me. I did several searches but did not come up with anything.

Could one of the developers point be in the right direction or give a brief summery of the failure management logic? How does 3.1.0 deal with failures?

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2

Very good point, RC Mike.
And on the same subject, how is the progress on dual airspeed sensor support coming along?
I know it has been included in the development plans for some time.

(And guess who has already dual sensors installed in the plane, just awaiting a supporting release… :mrgreen: )

Tom

3

I have looked but just can’t find out what will happen if airspeed fails. I would really like to have one of the developers give an answer!

Does the EKF option improve sensor failure management?

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4

Hi Mike,
It’s a good question, and I’ve added an answer in the FAQ here:
http://plane.ardupilot.com/wiki/fixed-wing-faq/#What_happens_if_an_airspeed_sensor_fails_in_flight
Cheers, Tridge

5

I’m glad you are looking into fixes for the last two cases. In my bug strike question sounds like it would take a high-speed dive into the ground. That would be very bad if it were far away flying an auto mission.

Maybe the solution is to have an altitude band and it gets below that altitude it switched to computed airspeed mode. It sounds like not having an airspeed sensor is actually safer – especially if you fly close to disk when insects are very active.

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