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Robot Planes and Helicopters Taught Aerobatics

Posted by Zonk on from the educating-the-bots dept.

holy_calamity writes "MIT and Georgia Tech researchers are teaching small robotic aircraft some impressive stunts. MIT's RC plane's can take off and land from vertical perches (video), while the Georgia Tech helicopter can land on slopes of up to sixty degrees, by flipping backwards into freefall as it lands (video)."

3 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Re:One of the best Helicoptor pilots by MouseR · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Woah. Just, woah.

  2. Re:One of the best Helicoptor pilots by jcr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    *I* have built R/C planes of the hand launched variety (3-5 foot wingspan) that can stay aloft for 2+ hours on *BATTERIES*

    That's nice. What was their on-board avionics complement like? How many cameras, and did you have visible light only, or IR and UV sensors as well? How about chemical sniffers, GPS, or encrypted and jamming-hardened radios? How about motion compensation? Autopilot if control link was lost?

    What you can build for hobby purposes, and what's practical for a military mission are very different things. Your R/C planes only have to have a receiver good for visual range (a couple hundred meters at most), and you don't even have any downlink.

    I've built R/C planes too, and I also worked on the ground control station for a target drone UAV many years ago. You're the one who doesn't know what he's talking about, son.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  3. Re:One of the best Helicoptor pilots by Cederic · · Score: 2, Insightful


    For tactical use, something small enough and cheap enough to have in a box in the back of the truck for immediate recce purposes might be of interest. A platoon commander would love to be able to answer "What's happening half a mile over there" at will.

    Of course, I'm mostly just guessing.