ExynAI Upgrade: Safe Landing Sites

Emergency landings happen when you're flying autonomous drones in complex, industrial environments. A long flight could cause a motor to overheat, or a rapidly degrading LiDAR could cause ExynAI to lose state due to dust or IR-absorbent gases. Even if everything goes right drift could cause the robot to think it's hovering over a safe zone instead of a rocky hill.

Basically, when you're asking a robot to explore beyond visual line of sight there's a small chance it might get stuck. We're still exploring hazardous environments! Regardless, we always want to ensure our robots can reliably return home and land on a stable surface after capturing actionable data.

But how could the robot even understand what a "stable surface" is?

And how would it be able to make that decision in flight? 

Through countless hours of testing and simulation, our team has developed a new safe landing routine that's now available to all Autonomy customers navigating with ExynAI. This safe landing routine enables ExynAI to constantly track the closest stable landing location just in case the operator or AI needs to command the robot to immediately land safely. 

The best part about this update is, Nexys operators don't need to worry about being re-trained on a new landing routine. This safe landing mode is built directly into ExynAI. Whether the robot is returning home due to low battery or a distance threshold, or if the operator is sending the robot back to the original takeoff location, ExynAI will run through a health check to determine if it can make it back home or find the closest, safest stable surface. 

This GIF above shows how ExynAI is processing safe landing zones while it's in flight. The blue voxels represent the safe landing locations available, while the orange and red voxels represent zones to avoid. 

To learn more about ExynAI's new Safe Landing Sites capabilities or to see the power of true aerial autonomy for yourself, contact us today to schedule your own personalized demo.