DJI Mini 5 Pro NEW Next-Gen Return To Home Demonstration

What’s up, everybody? Shawn here from Air Photography. Today I’m going to do a quick demonstration of the next-gen advanced return to home of the Mini 5 Pro. This new return to home was first introduced on the DJI Air 3S and then again on the DJI Mavic 4 Pro. With it, the drone builds a real-time map on its outbound flight that allows it to traverse extremely difficult environments using its obstacle avoidance and the real-time map it has built.

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This could be extremely beneficial if you have to take off from something like a balcony, out of a garage, or in a situation like this here with a tree canopy all above me. Normally this would not work for return to home. Traditionally, the drone would just come back to the GPS point and try to come straight down. But in this situation, that just doesn’t work. So we’re going to put that to the test today.

First Return-to-Home Test for DJI Mini 5 Pro: Basic Corridor Navigation

I’m going to put the drone up here and take off. “Home point updated. Home point has been updated.” I’m just going to fly out here and walk with it. Let’s get to an opening, and then we’ll send it for a little bit of a flight. That looks good there. The other impressive thing is that it can do all of this without even GPS connectivity. So if you’re flying and you happen to lose GPS connectivity, it’ll still be able to come home and navigate to the home point safely, even in a complex environment like this.

Let’s put the drone up. I have to do this fairly quickly because it’s starting to rain. As you can see, the raindrops are out there. We’ll just send the drone out a little bit. There we go—we’re about 200 meters away. I’m going to initiate a return to home, and we’ll let the drone come back. It should come down into that opening that we launched it up from and then go down this corridor. The landing pad is just over there. So we shall see what it does.

Now, it’s a good idea if you’re doing stuff like this to always keep an eye on it because although it’s very accurate and reliable, you know, be prepared to stop it if need be. The drone is coming down now. There it is up there. As you can see, it’s now moving forward, going down the corridor. And it should go ahead and land right on the pad. And there we go! That was extremely impressive. As you can see, it came back to us and came down through the opening we sent it up through, then navigated down this corridor here. Really impressive.

Second Return-to-Home Test for DJI Mini 5 Pro: Complex Turn Challenge

I’m going to do that test again with the DJI Mini 5 Pro, but this time we’re going to make it a little bit more complicated. We’re going to make the drone do a hard turn there. Again, I’m going to put the drone up here and take off. I’ll just walk with it while we send it out to the opening. Now, as mentioned, as we’re flying out here, it’s building a real-time map of its environment. That looks good there. So again, now we’ll send the drone up and we’ll just send it two ways.

That looks good there. Let’s initiate a return to home again. Return to home. Now it’s the same as the first test, but now we have to go all the way down to the end of the corridor down there and then make a hard left if it wants to land where it took off from. So we’ll see how it does. If you look at the green line there, it does kind of show it making that left. So it should work in theory, but we will soon find out.

It’s right above us right now. I’m going to stand out of the way just so I don’t confuse it—thinks I’m an obstacle. There it is. Now it should go down the path. And yep, there it goes. We’ll just follow it along as it navigates this area. Here is where it has to make its hard left. There it goes around the bend. There it is—right above the landing mat. So absolutely incredible! The DJI Mini 5 Pro drone was able to come down through the opening we sent it out through way down there, come down this path here, make a hard left, and then land exactly right on the pad.

That can be very beneficial. Like I said, if you have to take off from a balcony or you’re in an area with a lot of obstacles, you are going to be able to build a map and navigate even through complex environments. I am going to work on a more detailed return to home tutorial for those who are brand new to the Mini 5 Pro and want to learn a little bit more about how it works and some of its safety features. So stay tuned for that. Hopefully you enjoyed this video and found it had value. Thanks a lot for watching, and we’ll see you in the next one.

Check out more content from Shawn for additional drone insights.

Photo credits: Air Photography