Collision detector is way too sensitive #967
Description
Robots frequently incur collision damage from minor jolts that definitely should not cause any serious damage. For instance, below is a recording of a UGV disabling itself by driving over an urban hallway threshold. The robot has been manually ordered to maintain its speed, but after it hits the thin metal strip it is too damaged to continue, demonstrating unrealistically extreme fragility. (Not to mention that even if every servo in the robot did break instantly on impact, one would still expect the back wheels to clear the metal before the robot's momentum was spent.)
The github discussion linked above seems to provide the only explanation of how collision detection actually works. It suggests that every mechanical part on a robot will be completely disabled whenever the robot experiences an impulse greater than what would be produced by a 7.7 cm fall. This threshold is far too low, as any real robot would almost certainly withstand such a short fall. The result is that UGVs and UAVs alike can lose their actuators silently as a result of the tiniest impacts.