MIT Researchers Develop Autonomous Indoor Robocopter

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at MIT's Robust Robotics Group have developed a robotic helicopter capable of autonomously flying inside buildings or other GPS-denied environments. It has an on-board camera and a laser scanner that maps the local environment. The video talks about search-and-rescue and civil engineering applications, but it also brings somewhat scary reminders of Minority Report to my head. How long till I see one of these chasing me down a dark alley? The team's website has more videos showing earlier stages of the project."

Comments

Re:Seems mostly like a vision solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Yamaha had a fully autonomous solution for helicopter flight back in 1988. It later became the Yamaha R-MAX. And I've been working with autonomous helicopters since 2005.