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MIT's Acrobatic Helicopter
YourHero writes: "MIT has a new toy, a remotely-piloted helicopter that's agile, stable, and in the current public mood, perfect for urban combat and reconnaisance and surveying disaster sites. Oh, and it's also good for aerial photography. It's so good that it even does 360-degree aileron rolls at the flick of a switch. The release gives some basics, videos and other juice are here.
This cost $40k, excluding labor, because technically, student labor is "priceless" - so a nod to Kara Sprague, Alex Shterenberg, Ioannis Martinos, Bernard Mettler, and Vlad Gavrilets, who probably provided most of the labor. Stringfellow Hawk has not been reached for comment."
This quote from the article is probably the most important piece of information. The last decade has seen so massive advancements in our understanding of nonlinear dynamics and how they can be applied to engineered systems. Problems with traditionaly engineering approaches are that we often have to assume nonlinear systems (i.e. everything in the real world) are "linear about a point". While this is fine for some problems, like automobile suspension systems, it's just not sufficient for tasks like control complex airflow, predicting weather patterns, or driving robots across uneven systems.
As nonlinear analysis techniques become more and more prominent in engineering design, we'll start to see more and more of these technologies which can accomplish extremely difficult technical challenges.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
Dude, that doesn't make any sense. Just because the studios can use a cheap drone helicopter doesn't mean they would have to give up professional cameramen. Furthermore, it brings all kinds of different cinematography to the table, without the need for CG.
Even for the military, there isn't much need for a maneuverable drone.
What are you basing this statement on? I would say it's very clear the military definitely has a need for small, cheap, maneuverable drones. Between combat and safety, I can think of a myriad of applications for these.
That is an increadable piece of coding..only 12,000 lines to do real-time control and the snazzy aerobatics! Kara Sprague deserves a programming medal! Way to go!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
It couldn't carry much firepower, but it could probably manage a targeting laser to paint a target for a long range missle or even shell that had terminal guidance by laser...