Shield

This article explains what Shield is, how it behaves during different mission types, and how it helps maintain safe clearance between the Hovermap, the robot, and surrounding obstacles.

What is Shield?

Shield is a virtual safety bubble that surrounds both the Emesent scanner and the drone. It is designed to prevent the drone from moving too close to obstacles by maintaining a minimum separation distance during flight.

Shield is available in both Pilot Assist and Autonomy missions. Depending on the mission type, Shield can be either user-defined or fixed, and its effective size may dynamically adjust during flight to maintain safe clearance from obstacles.

Why Shield matters

Shield plays a critical role in reducing the risk of collisions during flight. By maintaining a safe distance from obstacles, Shield supports safer operation in confined, complex, or low-visibility environments.

Understanding how Shield behaves in different mission types allows operators to configure flights appropriately and anticipate how the system will respond near obstacles.

• Improved obstacle clearance: Helps prevent the drone from flying too close to structures.

• Safer operations: Supports controlled flight in confined or complex environments.

• Mission adaptability: Adjusts behavior based on mission type and flight conditions.

• Reduced pilot workload: Automatically manages safe distances during flight.

How Shield works

Shield uses distance values to maintain minimum clearance between the drone and nearby obstacles. Shield works differently depending on whether you are performing a Pilot Assist or Autonomy mission.

Shield is a passive safety system. It does not protect against objects that are actively moving toward the robot, such as:

• Birds

• Moving ropes or cables

• Falling rocks or debris

Shield in Pilot Assist

Shield defines a three-dimensional safety zone around the drone and Hovermap. This boundary represents the minimum allowable distance from obstacles that the system will attempt to maintain.

In Pilot Assist missions, Shield settings are user-configurable. Cortex uses these values as a target minimum distance for obstacle avoidance. During flight, the effective Shield may grow or shrink depending on drone movement. For Example:

• The Shield may increase its safety margin forward during high-speed flight to allow more space for controlled deceleration.

• The Shield may shrink to the minimum allowable distance defined by Cortex when flying alongside a structure, allowing closer operation while maintaining safety.

Shield in Autonomy

In Autonomy missions, Shield values are fixed and not affected by user input. These values are defined by Cortex based on the drone type and are set to provide the minimum safe clearance required for autonomous navigation. Cortex manages these distances automatically during flight to ensure safe operation.

See the table below for the minimum traversable gaps used in Autonomy for each supported drone platform. Values represent the total gap size, measured edge to edge and centered on the drone's center point.

Common use cases

Shield is used in both assisted or autonomy mission types to help manage obstacle avoidance.

Best Practices

The following best practices help ensure Shield is used effectively and consistently to support safe operation across different mission types and environments.