Land detection in copter generally works very well. But when auto landing in a windy condition, especially with precision landing enabled (PLND_ENABLED). copter may flip over sometimes like this video
APDS-9930 is a small and cheap short range (~10cm) proximity sensor. I attach it to landing gear to detect copter is close to ground
I’m all for this, but perhaps the driver could be in ap_rangefinder as a new backend? Then this could call any rangefinder (there is already a vl53l0x driver in there by the way).
Also, implementing as AP_Landing_Detector (rather than AC_xxx) would make it easier for quadplane/vtol to use it (I think tailsitters would be a great use case). But please, make a PR!
I did not put it in ap_rangefinder because apds-9930 is not exactly a rangefinder. It cannot output exact distance reading. It can only tell you “there is something within detect range”. Rangefinders usually have a minimum range and tends to inaccurate in very close range. By contrast, proximity sensor can only detect object in very close range.