Robo-copter can navigate inside your home
This quadrocopter can find its way around interiors.
(Credit: Ascending Technologies)Just when you were getting used to the idea of unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling the skies over your city, they're beginning to enter buildings.
This flying robot designed by a U.S.-German team recently won a contest in which the goal was to autonomously navigate inside a simulated nuclear power plant and find and image a control panel without the aid of a GPS.
The Pelican, based on hardware designed by German start-up Ascending Technologies with programming by a team at MIT, accomplished the mission on its fourth attempt, but with only a few minutes to spare. It netted a $10,000 prize at the International Aerial Robotics Competition.
The Pelican is a micro air vehicle (MAV) with a quadrotor design, using four propellers on a carbon-fiber frame for lift and control. It maps hallways and rooms with a 32-yard-range laser scanner and stereo cameras while wirelessly reporting its progress to offboard computers. The location and mapping algorithm was implemented by the MIT team.
Entering its 20th year, the small but venerable IARC proposes challenges that cannot be met with current technology, military or otherwise. In its next mission, the sixth, MAVs will have to penetrate a simulated security compound, steal a flash drive and replace it with a dud before exiting safely and undetected.
It's a good thing MAVs still sound like a thousand mosquitoes due to rotor noise. Otherwise they might start putting spies out of business.
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim. 
Not to mention that a fly could land on a control panel, but would it "recognize" it?
This would be so cool to chase the dog around with. And I thought a remote controled car was fun.
And then bringing back to you nice and mangled, to wave it around just out of arms reach and brag, then dash off once he got you to try to grab it...
How about this solution: it's a tool, just like any other. What you do with it falls on you, so crashing your flying robot into someone is no different from hitting him with your car. Using it to listen in on the neighbors is no different than planting a walkie-talkie under their bed.
Problem solved.
- by ketanco August 17, 2009 6:55 AM PDT
- There was a similar helicopter robot built a while ago by Carnegie Mellon University. Though it is used outdoors, it uses pretty much the same concept for navigation. See article here:
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