Object avoidance limitations with Copter 3.5

ArduCopter Copter 3.5
1

Hi,

I had some questions about the current limitations of object avoidance with Copter 3.5:

  1. Does ArduPilot support more than 4 LiDARs for obstacle avoidance, or is the current limitation still 4?
  2. What’s the update on object avoidance supporting “stop” in addition to “slide” for obstacle avoidance?
    https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/issues/5606
  3. Object avoidance currently only works in the direction the vehicle is heading. So if my vehicle were to drift as a result of wind, COG, or other reasons, how could I go about designing the collision avoidance system?
  4. Copter 3.5-rc5 provided object avoidance parameter (AVOID_MARGIN) for configuring distance to maintain from objects. But on the wiki pages for the LightWare SF40/C and TeraRanger Tower, it’s mentioned that the safety margin to objects is hard-coded to 2m. Do the pages just require updating or is there still a 2m limitation specific to 360 degree sensors or something? (just a little confused)
    http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-lightware-sf40c-objectavoidance.html
    http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-teraranger-tower-objectavoidance.html

I’d be really grateful if anyone could help clear some of these me.
Thanks.

2

8 planar sectors are used in the avoidance library, plus rangefinder down (and up?).
Limitations on number of devices really depends how you connect them.