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."

Comments

Army can't do it?

[solive1]

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.

Re:Army can't do it?

[swb]

It's not that the Army isn't doing it in some R&D lab, but regular army is pretty constrained by all that bureaucracy.

It's kind of like how hikers and campers often have gear the regular army doesn't have.

Re:Army can't do it?

[D.Throttle]

If you read the article more carefully it says "Mike Kennedy, a robotics projects officer at the lab". He's an officer in the ARMY at Fort Benning where this took place.

Re:Army can't do it?

[asynchronous13]

"What information does he have that says that the Army can't do this yet?"

Maybe the DARPA contract that hired Georgia Tech to design a UAV helicopter? Incidentally, this is the lab I work for. A choice quote from a high ranking army official at a recent demonstration of the GTMax was, "It is criminal for this thing to be sitting in the lab". He was impressed, and the Army wants one.

Most people like to see the videos

Re:Army can't do it?

[tuxlove]

I'd hazard a guess that flying autonomous military robots like, oh, say, Tomahawk missiles, can pretty much do what these things do (except land, but of course you don't want them to :). And they've been around a long time.

But, in fact, the military is actively developing flying robots of other kinds as well. You certainly don't hear all about it, but the stuff you do hear is pretty damn amazing.

Re:Army can't do it?

[RWerp]

FYI: the Canadian government does not like to brag about it, but Canadian snipers had more kills in Afghanistan than any others (probably per sniper, but who knows).

Whoa

[cephyn]

"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...

Re:Whoa

[Anonymous Coward]

"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...

"Computers are cool", said girl, 18.

Wow, she sounds hot too.

Re:Whoa

[mikeophile]

She is.

Re:Whoa

[cephyn]

Once again, ability to make robot sound effects properly predicts good mating characteristics!

Re:Whoa

[Anonymous Coward]

But check out the rocket between her legs here.

Oh, mama!

Robotic X-Prize

[artlu]

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

Re:Acrobatic Robots

[greymond]

When they make Cherry 2000's is when most people will care.

Robot Soccer?

[raquelita]

See this...

The 9th World Cup is coming

And then we talk...

Attack Drones

[Chagatai]

Someone recently sent a model plane over the Atlantic much in the same manner as these kids. I wonder if terrorists would develop something like this. Imagine, some guy in the Middle East builds forty or fifty of these aircraft, programs them with waypoints, and lets 'em loose. They recharge by day through solar energy and run off of batteries at night. A few days later, Washington DC is surrounded by these planes flying circles over the city en masse, at which point they do something nasty.

Hey, Congressmen: No amount of legislation would stop this.

It's not just bureaucracy...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:wtf is that?

[Rorschach1]

"That pic is useless for determining hotness level."

Dude... she's clearly female, and has a laptop. That's good enough for the /. crowd.

Competition homepage

[aggiefalcon01]

A bit late maybe, but this link oughtta be added in there: it's the homepage for the competition itself:
http://avdil.gtri.gatech.edu/AUVS/IARCLaunchPoint. html
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' ...