A.I. Helicopter?

CowboyRobot writes "Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization just launched the Mantis, a 'low-cost, intelligent small helicopter'. SMH reports that 'Within a decade armies of tiny helicopter drones will monitor traffic, inspect buildings for maintenance problems, map bushfires, look for faults in powerlines, and join search-and-rescue missions.' This is much larger than the Seiko flying robot reported last month, but the Mantis should be truly autonomous."

Comments

Finding faulty powerlines

[ObviousGuy]

Searching for missing hikers
Surveying wildfires
Surveying the houses of known government enemies
Surveying the homes of suspected government enemies
Surveying your home

What happens when it crashes.

[ericspinder]

The first could be on the market in three years.

Ok, what happens when these things lose their bearing and crashes into (say a) daycare, or someone's house. Under close supervision they might prove to be safe, but just to get a jump on things I would suggest reinforcing our tin foil hats with kevlar. Basicly it is just one more step until we see what I really want, a car that drives itself.

Re:What happens when it crashes.

[mirko]

They might equip it with a parachute, IMHO.
If not at present, probably before mass-producing these.

extended list of uses

[Lord_Dweomer]

"'Within a decade armies of tiny helicopter drones will monitor traffic, inspect buildings for maintenance problems, map bushfires, look for faults in powerlines, and join search-and-rescue missions.' "

......follow and record the activities of suspected terrorists, follow and record the activities of people expressing different views than the government, look through your apartment window to monitor your computer use and protect you infringing on copyrights, look down the blouse of the attractive blonde standing at the corner.....(takes off his tinfoil hat)

what is AI about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it has a computer that makes decisions based on a sensor. I made a simple robot like this in my Electrical engineering class sophmore year, or is there something more to it?

It's a nice step, but it just doesn't seem like it's as big a deal as they make it out to be.

GPS independance is good...

[drenehtsral]

It's really cool to see somebody useing a non-GPS navigation system, because once you get into cities, GPS becomes pretty flakey, not to mention that the US military can shut it down at their convenience (and the inconvenience of the rest of the world).
My hat's off to their programmers =:-)

They'd better have excellent control

[AtariAmarok]

I think these things would really require AI and real-time processing of the 3d environment that we don't have right now.

Without this, they are quite dangerous. Once they get too low, it would be like having a buzz-saw flying by. Imagine the liability.

Hardly covert

[ChrisPaget]

You've evidently never flown an R/C helicopter. I fly a 30-size and that looks like a 60-size (about 30% bigger than mine in terms of weight and rotor diameter), and they make a LOT of noise. If this thing was anywhere near, you'd know about it - the engines are two-stroke, operating at around 20,000 RPM. And that's without the sound of the blades (also pretty significant).

Add to that the fact that these things shake. A lot. You can't hope for a clear image from far enough away to not hear it. I've mounted a digital camera on my heli before, and used the remote to take pictures of stuff from the air. With a UKP500 digital camera at its fastest shutter speed, all I got were some vague blurs - you can just about make out me holding the controls and my housemate with the camera remote - and that was from about 20 feet away.

Noisy as hell, shakey as hell, useless for covert surveillance. And anything that's not covert can be shot down...

Re:Hardly covert

[Jerf]

"Existing small helicopters are loud" does not directly imply "all small helicopters must be loud"; that's an unwarrented conclusion. If you dump more money into it I would expect you can nearly eliminate the engine noise. The R/C helicopter ethuisiast is not likely to want to pay what this would cost, though.

Same goes for the other characteristics you cite. Not all small helicopters necessarily must be shakey, nor does shakiness necessarily imply "useless for surveillance" (you can still take fast snapshots with expensive cameras (digital or analog), and with adequate computer assistance you may still get human-usable video; jitter correction technology has been in consumer-grade camcorders for a while).

"Low cost" is a relative term, after all; a surveillance grade helicopter would make your R/C helicopter look like a toy by cost comparision, and the pictures in the article certainly aren't it, but it might still be low cost as compared to human surveillance.

On the other hand, a certain amount of blade noise is unavoidable, but possibly controllable.

I'm not saying you're wrong, maybe it is impossible, I'm saying that the evidence you cited doesn't warrent the conclusions you make.

Re:Hardly covert

[tiger99]

Yes, you have a point, but there are ways round most of the noise and vibration issues, starting with exotic blade shapes, elastomeric bearings in the rotor head, multi-cylinder engine or micro-turbine, with a decent silencer...... Lots of detail work needed, but not impossible. It could employ a few good engineers for a few years.

The far greater problem is SAFETY. These things are big enough to do serious injury. How can anyone guarantee that one will not fall into a crowd from 1000 feet, with rotor spinning?

There is a better way of doing all this, much less noise, much smaller engine, for manoeuvering and lift trimming only, much better stability, minimum vibration, and mostly soft, if it falls on anyone. It is called an AIRSHIP, or a BALLOON, or whatever the currently fashionable term is.

I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but in the UK at one time (have not seen it for a year or two) a fairly modest airship was used as a TV platform for major events. It could hover safely (over Wembley Stadium, for example) where the equivalent helicopter could not. It was very much cheaper to run, and quieter. It was a bit bigger, but not ridiculously so. Scaled down, it would be much more useful, a thing like that can hover for many days on a single tank of fuel.

I know which I would prefer to be hovering above me....

However, for some applications, such as chasing criminals, but not in crowded areas, a miniature helicopter would be ideal. Following stolen cars, for example, which currently is done by full-size helicopters, which sadly do sometimes crash.

It is not a bad idea, if used carefully and sensibly, where the risks are not too great, but definitely not a universal panacea.

I think there's a slight typo in the article

[thisissilly]

tiny helicopter drones will monitor traffic, inspect buildings for maintenance problems, map bushfires, look for faults in powerlines, and join search-and-rescue missions

ITYM:
tiny helicopter drones will monitor public unrest, inspect building windows for cute girls, map ex-girlfriends' activities, look for faults in polictical opponents, and join search-and-blackmail missions.

Re:Killer App Scorecard

[interstellar_donkey]

Not to disagree with you, but I for one could see how these would be useful in those examples:

Within a decade armies of tiny helicopter drones will monitor traffic,
Humm... Cheaper than fixed cameras ? Even if the machines were cheap, that doesn't seem energy efficient, with fuel cost and all.

Fixed traffic cameras are a good start, but they can't always get to the root of a traffic problem because their number, and points of view are finite. A disabled vehicle may be causing a traffic problem, but it's difficult for traffic managers to act accordingly if the view of the problem is obscured by something . . . say, a large delivery truck. A flying autonomous robot would always be able to position itself for a view that would give the most accurate information of the problem.

inspect buildings for maintenance problems
Cosmetic problems, that is. It is flying on the outside, after all. Doesn't seem to be more appealing than using binoculars or climbing a building across the street.

If I owned a large building, I'd much rather be paying for a small, relatively inexpensive robot to check basic exterior maintenance problems then pay for somebody who's only job was to climb around with a pair of binoculars. The robot could also check for things other then cosmetic problems: broken windows that are not reported, cracks in the structure, heck, even something that would notify me that the rain gutters are too mucked up and need to be cleaned.

map bushfires
Although I am not familiar with the art of fighting bush fires, it seems to me that they propagate along a frontier line which is defined by the wind, so as long as you know about the wind, you can infer where the fire is going. So, it seems, these machines wouldn't add much.

I'm not too familiar with the nature of bush fires either, but I would suspect that the nature of the fires is subject to more variables then just the wind. Either way, there needs to be some way of verifying the position of the fire, and a small flying robot would be a lot cheaper (and in some cases faster) then a standard manned helicopter or airplane.

look for faults in powerlines
This looks interesting, although (1) Not sure if that many faults are apparent (e.g. burnt transformer, loose cables) and (2) Isn't there remote sensing equipment that can already do that (e.g. reflecting waves in the cable?, or signaling from checkpoints ?)

Having survived a few storms that have downed power lines at the end (from the pole to the home), I know for a fact that the power company does nothing until reported. In addition, a downed pole could still be attached to a line that still functions. Power still goes through, but certainly not safe.

I do, however, like your ideas.

* Helicopter drones tracking suspect vehicles or individuals for police enforcement

Or even better, Helicopter drones operated by the news media. There is nothing worse then a swarm of news choppers flying above the police helicopter trying to cover some breaking incident. It's loud and annoying. I would suspect these things would be at least a little more quiet.

Though I'm not sure how much I'd like the media to have that sort of stealth reporting ability. I can only imagine what a paparazzi could do with one of those.

* Helicopter drones doing advertisement from the sky

That, sadly is going to happen irregardless of what technology comes out.

So Many Interesting Uses...

[0x69]

What's the most interesting use for this unmanned mini "A.I. robot" chopper?

- Loads more cool camera angles on sporting events
- Program a few to scope out the White House & Pentagon, scrub off all fingerprints, launch, and then see how long you can outrun Uncle Sam's big, manned Apache choppers
- "Inspect" popular beaches from the comfort of your A/C'ed basement on hot summer days
- Geek farmers arm 'em with BB guns and throw away the stupid old scarecrows.
- Fly around the Shuttle looking for damage - maybe even sacrifice itself to stop a hurling piece of space junk from hitting!
- Deliver small gifts to your geek SO
- Cowboy Neil Is Watching Your Every Move