To ensure effective data capture and the safe operation of Hovermap, you must be aware of the following limitations.
Environmental conditions
Hovermap has an Ingress Protection rating of IP65. This means that:
Hovermap is dust-tight (no ingress of dust).
Hovermap is protected against water jets from any direction.
Exposure to conditions above this rating may result in hardware failure. We don’t recommend using Hovermap in rain or fog.
Temperature limitations
Hovermap is rated to operate in temperatures between -10°C (14°F) and 45°C (113°F). Operation outside of these temperatures has not been tested and could result in abnormal behavior.
We recommend allowing Hovermap ~5 minutes to acclimatize to ambient temperature before flight, especially in hot and humid environments like underground mines. This is particularly important if it was stored in an air-conditioned environment. Skipping this step may cause lens fogging and potential flight issues.
Range limitations
Hovermap uses a LiDAR with a range of 0.5 m to 100 m for ST and 0.5 to 300m for ST-X. The closer you are to the target, the better the quality of the scan. You will achieve the best quality scan if Hovermap is at a distance of 5 m to 15 m from the target.
LiDAR limitations
Hovermap’s LiDAR uses light reflection to measure the distance of the object from the sensor. This can become a problem if:
A surface is highly reflective. This can cause points to be misrepresented, and the resulting point cloud will have a high level of noise.
A surface is non-reflective. This can cause the points to be absorbed and disappear, and the resulting point cloud will have missing points.
Highly reflective surfaces Non-reflective surfaces | Non-reflective surfaces |
|---|---|
Mirrors | Water |
Windows & Glass | Some gasses |
Highly polished surfaces | Very dark matte black surfaces |
Collision Avoidance (Shield) limitations
Shield is a key feature of Hovermap that prevents you from flying into static objects. However, it will not actively avoid objects approaching the system and will not combat environmental factors (for example, strong gusts of wind). It can therefore be hit by birds, falling rocks, moving ropes, or other moving objects, and can be affected by external forces. We recommend that you avoid flying too close to movable objects, as these can be disturbed by the drone, or close to objects in very windy conditions.
Interference limitations
Avoid areas with elevated levels of electromagnetism to minimize interference. A distance of at least
10 m should be maintained between Hovermap and elevated EMI sources such as base stations and radio-cellular transmission towers.