Smart Flying Robots

Chernyakov writes "MARVIN, a fully autonomous RC helicopter built by the Technische Universitaet Berlin, won the 2000 International Aerial Robotics Competition. MARVIN has a radio-linked ground station consisting of several networked Linux machines (which provide the computing power for vision, mapping and flight-course generation). The robots' mission is to fly into a disaster area complete with fire, water and smoke hazards, to locate and avoid threats to itself, to find bodies, distinguish from survivors and the dead, identify hazardous materials containers, determine if the container contents are radioactive, biohazardous, or explosive (by reading the labels), generate a detailed map of the disaster area, photograph the area, and return safely back to base. MARVIN pulled it off completely autonomously, with no human help or intervention. High quality (90 MB) and Low quality (12 MB) MPEGs of the robot are available."

Comments

MARVIN, eh?

[RottenDeadite]

What happens when he gets all depressed? Do the robots start trying to kill themselves?

***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***

Re:MARVIN, eh?

[torpor]

It lies down in the mud for a few million years, and when asked why, replies:

"It's a wonderful way of being wretched."

Uh-huh

[Uruk]

It's going to do all of those things, eh?

I don't know how they're coding it, but they're probably going to hype it as "Artificial Intelligence"!!!!!

What if the person is unconcious? Is that a dead person or an alive person? What if they're alive, but not breathing? Could it even tell if they were breathing? Could I fool the machine into thinking I was dead?

The problem with these types of things is that they fall into two categories - machines that are so totally wrong in what and how they judge things that they aren't even worth looking at, and machines that are right some of the time, and so horrendously wrong when it counts that they aren't worth looking at.

Well that's my cynical $0.02 anyway.

Re:Uh-huh

[Idaho]

Yeah, but I don't think this is exactly the point. It can go where normal people can't, and even if it can't determine whether a person is dead or not, it can at least keep itself safe so you don't have to build new ones all the time.

And if it can take pictures all around the place, that's real cool.

I am living in Enschede, a city in the Netherlands where a fireworks bunker exploded half a year ago. This robot could have been usefull to fly over the (possible very dangerous) site to take pictures and determine the situation, without the risks of loosing even more peoples lifes.

And it can be real handy for the police afterwards, to determine how things actually happened (like 'hey, that container full of fireworks wasn't supposed to be standing there!')

Marvin the Manic-Depressive Autonomous Helicopter

[Tumbleweed]

"A brain the size of a Beowulf cluster, and what do they have me do? Fly around disasters taking pictures..." *sigh*

I'd rather use an aerobot...

[webmaven]

Check out the aerobot. This VTOL aircraft uses ducted fans insead of a conventional rotating airfoil, and is capable of autonomous take-offs and landings. Also check out the wankel-powered Skycar.

--

Some more info & a description of the video

[Chernyakov]

In order to fly autonomously (by itself), MARVIN uses a LOT of hardware: 3 accelerometers, 3 gyroscopes, 3 compasses (redundancy), 2 ultrasonic range finders, a differential GPS system (accurate to 2 centimeters), a fire detector, and an altimeter. It also has an onboard CPU, communications equipment, power distribution, etc.

The helicopter itself looks like a standard .60-size XCell.

Anyone who has ever flown an RC helicopter knows how difficult it is for a human, much less a computer. The software usually involves use of a Kalmon Filter to fuse the sensors, and neural networks to build fuzzy control rules for the flight surfaces (aileron, rudder, collective, etc) in real-time.

The video, boring for some, shows the helicopter taking off and flying over the disaster area. The heli adjusts its location constantly for better views of targets then flies away and lands. There are good shots of the ground station showing Mission Control, robot-vision, and flight-path mapping. Also some good shots of not-so-successful flights and what can go wrong.

This is the tenth year of the IAR Competition; each year the mission gets more complicated. In 1991, autonomous flying vehicles (no hovercraft) simply needed to pick up a disc at one end of the field and drop it off at a deposit-point on the other end. No one completed the mission that year.

As a side point, let me just say that technology can always be used for evil, but development of robots such as these are most useful in what the industry terms D^3 (D-cubed) environments: Dull, Dirty, and Dangerous.
Dull: Flying over thousands of acres of forest painstakingly examining almost each tree for insect damage.
Dirty: A disaster area with potential exposure to lethal gases and the like.
Dangerous: Photographing a volcano for threat analysis.

I have a copy of the 90 MB mpeg -- I'll try to mirror it on Mojo Nation, but my one-way cable modem might not like it.

Remember Sikorski.

[Apuleius]

"If a man is in need of rescue, an airplane can come in and throw flowers on him, and that's just about all. But a direct lift aircraft could come in and save his life."

Helicopter pioneer Igor Sikorsky

However, the helicopter did come to be
used for other purposes.
Party pooping away,

--Apuleius