Shortcomings and limitations#

Parrot Sphinx aims at reproducing the real and approaches this goal without totally reaching it. This section lists up the known shortcomings and limitations that could help the user have a better understanding and usage of the tool.

Cameras#

  • Front camera settings: Changing settings of the camera may have no effect in simulation mode. For example: white balance, FPS, resolution, ISO, shutter speed are ignored.

  • Resolutions: The resolutions used for streaming and recording are generally lower than with the real drone.

  • [ANAFI Ai] Microphone: No mounted microphone is simulated. Therefore the recorded videos have no audio tracks.

  • [ANAFI Ai] Visual tracking: When running “Follow me” mode, only the GPS signal is used to track the actor, not the front camera.

  • [ANAFI Ai] Hand landing: Landing on a Hand is not yet available in Parrot Sphinx.

Physics#

  • Electronics heat: The temperature variations due to the electronic activity of processors and sensors is out of scope.

  • High frequency mechanical vibrations: Mechanical vibrations have generally too high frequencies to be simulated.

  • Aerodynamics effects: Complex aerodynamic effects requires too much resources for a real-time simulation. For that reason, only nominal aerodynamic forces and torques are generated.

  • Collisions: the geometrical shapes used for collision are much simpler than the actual geometry of the drone.

Connectivity#

  • Wifi settings: Whatever the solution chosen to have Wi-Fi connectivity enabled, changing the Wi-Fi settings offered via Parrot-ARSDK has no effect.

  • [ANAFI Ai] 4G capabilities: Real ANAFI Ai comes with a 4G connectivity allowing the drone to communicate with remote servers while flying. This part is not present in simulation, while it is still possible to configure the simulated drone to let it access the Internet using the option wan_access=1.