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Cornell Builds Autonomous UAV

Posted by michael on from the million-and-one-uses dept.

tshak writes "From Microsoft Research, 'Faculty and students at Cornell University have built an unmanned airplane with its own on-board, embedded control system. The large-scale model plane flies by accessing coordinates from an off-the-shelf GPS unit.' Not only does the plane run XP embedded, but the software is written in C# on the .NET Compact Framework. This is all powered by an 800mhz Crusoe processor with 1GB of total system storage."

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  1. CUUAV by UMhydrogen · · Score: 5, Informative
    One of my friends is one of the leads on the project for Cornell University. He was the one who designed the site and a bunch of other things on the plane.

    Yes, they were given grant money from Microsoft, but that wasn't the only influence in their decisions. They've put long hard hours into the plane. XP Embedded does allow them to add functionality to the plane. A lot of companies have given then grants and sponsorships that have allowed them to build the plane. Don't forget this is Cornell here and they're not going to just rely on Microsoft to make the plane run. They also weren't attempting to make a "real" plane - this is still an UAV which isn't meant to have the power of a full aeronautical vehicle.

    Unfortionatly one of their planes was destroyed in a fire at a hotel in Maryland while they went down to show off the plane. Luckily, their backup plane that is still being built was not destroyed.