Inspire 2 review series- testing upward/downward vision

Today we are discussing Inspire 2’s protection feature in landing and upward obstacle avoidance.

Downward sensor would recognize ground texture for a safe landing spot during auto landing, Return to Home or when the battery level is very low.

Upward facing infrared sensors help to sense obstacles above. Check this video to see how it works:

Downward vision

We took off at waterside, and tried to land on water.

The drone would lower down slowly and stretch its landing gear, now obstacle avoidance system is shut down.

When the altitude drops to 4.3m, the app would warn it’s not sutable for landing. Now Inspire 2 would keep hovering, and landing gear would retract again.

Not only in case of water surface, the warning would pop out when there are branches, stairs or in balcony.

We are going to have very violent test: try to land it on a man’s head.

Well, the app also reminds us it’s not suitable for landing.

In summary:

We can find out though these tests that: Inspire 2 not only knows the height (calculated by downward visual sensor, ultrasonic sensor, barometer and GPS), it can also detect the situation of landing spot to see whether it’s safe to land on.

Otherwise the app will remind you it’s not suitable for landing, and the aircraft will hover and extend its landing gear:

There is a bug though. If the bushes are trimmed tightly, Inspire 2 will go on landing. By the way, Phantom 4 Pro also has the feature, making it much safer for users.

Upward facing infrared sensors

Inspire 2 can scan for obstacles above with infrared sensors on its top, which is really friendly for beginners.

We have tested this feature in many scenarios, the infrared sensors have showed different performance while the obstacles are different.

As picture below shows, there were a lot of colorful umbrellas above. Since there are huge gaps between umbrellas and sunlight was coming through, the infrared sensors didn’t recognize these umbrellas as obstacles.

We tested again under a plastic canopy around sunset time. This time infrared sensors worked quite fine. DJI Go app warned obstacles above. No matter how you operate the joystick, Inspire 2 hovered there.

In summary, upward facing infrared sensors have good performance when the obstacle has smooth surface and enough light. Comparatively speaking, infrared technology is not as precise as dual-vision sensors.

We’d still like to remind you keep safe in narrow spaces. We hope to see “more eyes” on Inspire 3, 4, 5, like these:

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