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Aerial Robotics Competition
anphilip writes "The annual International Aerial Robotics Competition just wrapped up, and I thought while our teams waited for the results I'd let the folks at Slashdot know about it. At any rate there's a brief story here and the group website is here."
When they have Acrobatic Robots, that's when I'll care.
Mike Kennedy (from the article): "These kids are cutting edge. They're doing things the Army can't do yet." What information does he have that says that the Army can't do this yet? Surely the Army doesn't give away all its secrets to this guy.
"It's a robot -- just a flying one," said senior Jessica Dooley, 22, of Phoenix, stepping mechanically like a robot and making "err, err, err" sounds.
Wow. She sounds hot...
Moo.
I won't trade privacy for security...but I might trade it for a remote control voyeur-bot.
Similar to having an X-Prize, there should be greater monetary rewards for robot evolution. Ie: a biped robot that can beat a human on a mile stretch, etc. Then, maybe we would see some quicker robot evolution!
GroupShares Inc. - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community
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artlu.net
i thought you said Anal Robotics Competition
"What information does he have that says that the Army can't do this yet?"
He's Program Officer for the Army for this technology, so maybe he knows what he's talking about.
You, on the other hand, clearly do not.
Waterloo Aerial Robotics Group Google Cache
Karma police, enjoy.
See this...
The 9th World Cup is coming
And then we talk...
Yes, I am a
anyone seen the movie "virus"? maybe the autonomous
robot can also rebuild itself from parts of dead
soldiers?
gives a new meaning to "recycled", eh?
open windows and doors? sheeshz~
I think you wanted to reply to this.
The guy is a tin foil dolt, true, but you aren't helping your cause posting way down here.
If you call it a flying robot, that's OK. But if you build essentially the same thing and call it a cruise missile, the government of New Zealand will have a problem with it.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Hey, Congressmen: No amount of legislation would stop this.
--Chag
This is the point in the converstaion where all the Spammer-hunters jump in, and post her address, home phone number, HS year book pictures and DMV records.
Any time now.
Waiting...
Awe, come on, you sick twisted stalkers, you can't keep all the nice ones to yourself!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
...and then launch a probe that could send video images of the interior to soldiers at a safe distance.
To: Canon Factory Service
1440 Chase AVE
Elk Grove Village, IL 60007
Concerning:
Canon Elura 65 digital camcorder malfunction
To whom it may concern,
I have greatly enjoyed my Elura 65 camcorder. I got it after reading a review by PCWorld. I bought it from Staples on 6/12/04 and have used it a lot. This past weekend, the lens became unable to fully close or fully open, and any videos taken with it are out of focus.
I hope you can fix my camcorder. Canon is makes great products. My Dad always used a Canon.
Note: nothing in your warranty mentions that shooting the Elura 65 from an aerial robot in order to facilitate remote video feed of possible military targets voids the warranty.
Thanks,
Himring
PS: Also, never hand your canon digital camera to an equally drunken friend to take a picture of you kissing the yaegermeister girl at Coyote Ugly. It may fall and jam the lens thus forcing repairs....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
er.....a) how is that informative to the subject (of her) when the pic sucks b) how the fuck would you know? That pic is useless for determining hotness level.
Mod parent down for being a karma-whoring waste of time.
There are a lot of considerations the military has to deal with that don't apply to "normal" situations.
:-/ )
:-)
The example of hiking gear is a good one. Sure you can sell all kinds of stuff to hikers who go out a couple of weekends a year... that's completely different from providing something to someone who is going to spend six months of every year in all kinds of outdoor environments from the desert to arctic/alpine climate. (Ask me how I know gear is used like this
When I was in the 82nd, sure my pack was a lot heavier that what the average hiker carries into Yosemite. However, it survived 45 jumps (two where the lowering cord failed to deploy and I rode it in and landed on it, hard), two trips to the Italian Alps in the dead of winter, visits to the Siani and Turkey in summer, and getting thrown into holes, piled under dozens of similar packs, and whacked around during a couple dozen miscellanous deployments. Try that with a $400 external-frame pack from your local sporting-goods store and see what you get
It may be that there are "secret" verisons of these in use (as another poster suggested) or there may be versions in R&D. But I'm willing to bet that ruggedizing things is (almost) as much a factor as the bureaucracy...
A gasoline powered flying robot, a helicopter of some sort. Have any electronics powered by some sort of small generator/dynamo running off the engine. Here's the cool part... have it with a sensor in the gas tank, so it knows when it is getting empty. Have a straw coming out the bottom that it can siphon with... then put up a big 50 gallon drum with a homing beacon for it to find. Wouldn't have to be really intelligent, just enough to keep from crashing into things, and to find its way home. Send it out all day buzzing the neighbors.
Yarf! err...err...err Yap!
During WWII, the Japanese sent many hydrogen-filled "fire balloons" across the Pacific on the jet stream. Some of them actually hit targets believe it or not, and one was the cause of the only civilian casualty on American soil during WWII.
Why is it that all scientific research and development be so heavily bonded with defence and warfare ? Applications like search and rescue etc take a backseat while the army using the gadgets to kill the enemy takes priority.
aerial robot == cruise missile . Same concept. GPS positioning, flies to it's target. Payload is arbitrary. http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/ /. Only difference is this guy has jet power, and he didn't join a club/school first. ...
as previously discussed on
I checked out their site and didn't see any balloon robots. Then I googled and observed a definite dearth. What's up with that? Such an obvious design and so few implementations.
Ditto all of that from the AC parent - this is an extreme example (meant to be modded funny), but if people are shooting at you, which would you rather have - this hovercraft or this airboat ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
here is a link to the competition site
and here is link Southern Polytechnic's site and Ga Tech's site
Its sad to me that sooo much research military-related. Yes, the Internet was done by [D]ARPA. I wish we could focus that energy into something besides ways of snooping on people then shooting hellfire missles at them. How about an X-Prize for vaccuming robots instead.
Urban warfare? Great future - sounds like lots of fun.
Sometimes I really wonder how programmed we all are...
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
You really should give us a heads-up before them things start buzzing around.
A bit late maybe, but this link oughtta be added in there: it's the homepage for the competition itself:. html
...
http://avdil.gtri.gatech.edu/AUVS/IARCLaunchPoint
Scrolling down in that page provides a list of the teams competing, as well as links to their homepages.
This link is about this particular event.
I have to think, though, that a competition with 11 USA teams and 4 Canadian ones is hardly 'international'
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
another way for us to kill people.
The American teams were fairly disappointing.
The American teams that brought their stuff were South Dakota School of Mines & Tech (SDSMT), Southern Poly State University(SPSU), Arizona State, and LeTourneau.
The problem is that SPSU, SDSMT and LeTourneau (who all used helicopters) all spent ~1500 bucks on a navigation system (made by rotomotion), instead of being creative and making their own. To make matters worse, the rotomotion system is horribly designed and their navigation system is still very unstable. SDSMT crashed their heli hard the day before the competition, and still had problems. SPSU had stability problems because of the rotomotion. LeTourneau didn't compete because their basic RC communication wasn't working right.
Arizona State isn't much better though. Their planes use a CloudCap navigation system. They were able to fly to different waypoints last year, so all they had to do this year is find the iarc symbol on a building. They spent 30-40 minutes on each attempt (which is LONG!), crashed two planes, and had no success. Their method of finding the symbol was to buy an expensive image processing system (read their paper about it) instead of taking the time to study image processing.
Aside from all this, I was really impressed by the canadian teams, which built their own navigation systems. Simon Fraser had a flight control system for their heli that used neural net controlled PID controller. They did two small demo flights and they were damn smooth. Their only problem was having a stable altitude.
Waterloo won first qualifier using a plane, and was the first team to do it with their own navigation system. Hats off.
ETS (another canadian team) is using a heli with their own nav system, but didn't have their system ready. Hope they'll be good comptetion next year.
....Hackers caused havoc today as a large number of police spybots started deliberately flying into each other over police headequarters. Video from the kamakzi spybots has been circlating on the web...
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
1. Robotic helicopter with a very hot engine and a straw sticking out the bottom.
2. 55-Gallon drum of gasoline outgassing from a hole where the straw goes in.
3. (In the words of that "Dances with Wolves" guy from "The Red Green Show") BOOOOM!
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Gasoline isn't explosive unless vaporized. Catching on fire is a concern, but hell, actively cool the refueling station. But yeh. Even a failure could be quite the fireworks event. ;)
While I wrote the post as a joke, here is how I envision the explosion could take place:
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
So you're suggesting that not only do I isolate this from my body and important properties, but that I set up a camcorder to prudently record the expensive but satisfying entertainment? Fair enough, but whenwe get this on slashdot, you're going to have to mirror the mpeg too....