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PC/104 Consortium Announces Design Contest Winners

Posted by timothy on from the here's-your-flying-car dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The PC/104 Consortium announced the winners of its annual design contest today at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco. One winner was an autonomous model helicopter developed by a team from the University of Southern California (USC). From the writeup: 'Not only can AVATAR fly without human intervention, it can also perform GPS waypoint navigation, autonomous vision-based landing and autonomous sensor-based take-off, and image processing from three Firewire cameras.' Check out the cool photos and other details!"

3 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. Explanation: what is PC/104? by Jim+Morash · · Score: 5, Informative

    PC/104 is a standard for embedded computers, based on ISA (and now PCI with PC/104 Plus). There are many companies that offer PC/104 compatible products, both single board computers (SBCs) and add-on modules for GPS, wireless networking, all kinds of digital or analog I/O, motor control, DSPs, etc. etc. The boards are a little over 3.5" square and vary in price, typically $200-$600, with processors from a 386 to a Pentium III. They are typically industrial-temperature qualified and shock-hardened, and used in many applications in robotics, avionics, factory automation and other places where small, harsh-environment computers are needed.

  2. More... by wan-fu · · Score: 2, Informative

    helicopter coolness

  3. Re:What size bird is that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Just found the AVATAR's site on Google. The heli chassis used is a Bergen Industrial Twin. Looks like I was a bit off: 22 inches high (stock, the AVATAR's skids obviously add a few inches), 59 inches long, and 810mm (2.66 feet) long blades.

    And apparently they're iBOT cameras, not Quickcams. Not that anyone cared.