Parrot Minidrone Error 1

Hello. I was trying to fly my Parrot Minidrone using my own customized Image Processing and Path Planning subsystems.

It appeared to be working until the interface pop-up window with a big green "START" button appeared on my computer screen.

However, within 0.5 seconds of starting to ascend, the drone shuts down with the error message stating: "Geo-fencing error detected. Shutting down the drone."

I attached the flight log file to this post as well. What I 'suspect' to be most relevant from the log file is the following line: "rsedu_control(): Flight aborted due to error condition 1 !"

Strange; https://uk.mathworks.com/help/simulink/supportpkg/parrot_ug/analyze-flight-log-errors.html does not state anything about the error condition 1...

I would appreciate it if anyone could help me solving this issue.

Answer 1

[Leepakshi]

Hi Jason,

This geo-fencing error occurs when the drone detects that its position or planned path is outside the predefined safety boundaries, often due to incorrect geo-fence settings or improper initialization of the drone’s position.

As implemented in the model, geo-fencing is triggered when the drone current state is more than 10 meters from the starting point in the X or Y direction.

If the error occurs immediately after take-off, it is possible that the state estimates are not accurate. Parrot uses optical flow to estimate changes in the XY position.

If the drone is not actually flying 10 meters away but the error still occurs, this suggests an issue with the optical flow measurements.

It is possible that the floor lacks a suitable pattern, is too reflective, or does not have adequate lighting conditions.

For optical flow applications on the ground, it is recommended that the surface has good textural features - such as newspaper, pieces of paper, textured flooring, or a rough cotton surface with patterns, with sufficient lightings - to provide sufficient contrast for the camera to track movement.

You can check ehether the error occurring when running the shipping examples? Has any further update been made to the model before the flight that is now failing due to geo-fencing?

Hope it helps!

[Jason]

Hi Leepakshi,

Thanks to your mention about the relation between the optical flow and geo-fencing algorithm, I was able to narrow-down the scope of troubleshooting, and eventually (voodoo-)located the source of error.

Without your answer, I would have remained clueless until now, thank you!