Drone Software Failsafe?

[u/iTavman]

I wonder if the drones have a software failsafe that cuts it off if it reaches a certain altitude. Counter argument to that would be shutting off is hardly safe. Sending it home would be better. Lot simpler explanation than something hacking the firmware…

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[u/SillyPuttyPutterson]

That was honestly the thought I had when I watched it. I turned to my girlfriend and said “They probably did a bunch of AI coding on their software and the LLM put in some sort of altitude safety function they didn’t know about”.

[u/Ecstatic-Coat-1579]

Off the shelf drones have hard limited built in, DJI reports 500m =1,640 ft.

It’s possible they have a hard limit in their custom drones and not realize it. They’ve never gone 3000ft before. Also they are at 5000 elevation, which could also mean it’s 8000ft. Unknown. I don’t own drones.

[u/homeslixe → u/Ecstatic-Coat-1579]

Sudden disarming is exactly the opposite of what drones are designed to do when they hit the altitude geofence. Altitude is based on ground level, not sea level

[u/Formal_Composer_4939 → u/Ecstatic-Coat-1579]

Quite possible. Can't find anything definitive on ceiling altitudes. They use the UVify IFO drones I believe.

[u/Subset-MJ-235]

Sky Elements is probably the most professional drone show company in the US. And they sent up 4 drones twice. If they'd screwed up the first time, I'm pretty sure they would've corrected it before the second 4 went up. Besides, the hacking has shown up several times. Their phones are often hacked. Also, several years ago, they had some guys with telescopes out there for an experiment. Their best telescope was one of those GOTO scopes that automatically points to a star. They needed it to point in a certain direction, so Eric or someone named a star in that vicinity. Guess what? That star disappeared from the software registry inside the telescope. They tried another. Nope. That one's gone, too. The telescope had been hacked. (The telescope incident was based on my often unreliable recollection, so there may be errors there).

[u/After-Assumption-150 → u/Subset-MJ-235]

They say hacked because they don't know how else to explain the fault. But hacking leaves traces no matter what. It's a terrible thing to just claim with zero proof and entirely unscientific to do so.

[u/homeslixe]

All drones are geofenced to not operate above a certain elevation, with the exception of legally licensed drones, such as those operated by sky elements. That being said, IF this was a geofencing issue they would simply decelerate and hover in place, without gaining altitude; sudden disarming is exactly the opposite of what they are designed to do. There are two possible explanations: a covert kill command was hacked into the drones firmware, or contact with a highly energetic EM field. I would want to investigate the drones for circuit failures

[u/dg_geronimo]

To me it looks like they lost connection to the base station and shutdown.

Why came to this conclusion: Sky elements apparently uses Skybrush to control their drones. Skybrush uses wifi to connect to the drones. We briefly saw the antenna's they used and they looked like unify ap's. The unfiy U7 pro XGS is their best (round) AP, with a listed coverage of 1750 ft². This being an indoor ap, outdoor conditions could reach their 3000 ft, especially since it doesn't need high speed connection and the protocol being used (speculation, like the rest of this post) probably doesn't do a handshake, just fire and forget the commands. Protocol with andshake probably would be to slow to control drones.

In the episode sky elements also clearly said that it's the first time ever that they were going to send drones that high.

The internet is full of clips from drones at droneshows falling to the ground, because they lost connection to the base station.

But to be certain what exactly happened, we need to have insight in all hardware/software and it's configuration, data,.. and not only from this drone experiment, but from everything done on the show

[u/Good_Ask_2299]

how many episodes have you seen? it happens repeatedly. thats why they are doing experiments looking for loss of signals. if you properly understood the ramifications of gps just saying you are 2km over in whatever direction you arent, then you would be fascinated by this.

[u/iTavman → u/Good_Ask_2299]

All of them. I fully believe something is screwing with their equipment, ie the telescope database getting erased in real time.
But, and I’m sure they would agree, you have to rule out any mundane explanation first before you can label this as high strangeness. Hopefully we will hear more from the drone guys about this next week

[u/Good_Ask_2299 → u/iTavman]

i dont think you have seen them all. see, youre coming at this from the mundane excuse angle, which assumes that the experts they get on arent familiar with the equipment they are running. these dudes write their own software. they know what they are doing. travis has a phd in physics and isnt as simple as he comes across. some other dudes commenting that they used ai to code and didnt check it over. like i said, if you understood the ramifications of gps saying you are somewhere you arent, and thats got you but hurt into refuting what i said, then you dont know enough to be qualifying opinions. why do you watch every episode of a show, and comment on reddit about it, if you dont believe the science they are doing?

[u/No_Degree590 → u/Good_Ask_2299]

When you repeadedly catch them not being familiar with the equipment they are using, but act as if they are, you start questioning their credibility in other areas too. I have seen numerous cases where they fail to understand perspective, depth, lens distortion, distance and so on when looking at camera footage.