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U. Penn Super Quadcopter Learns New Tricks
Freddybear writes "University of Pennsylvania's GRASP lab posted new video of their scary fast maneuverable quad-rotor drone. It can now fly through openings (hoops) which are themselves moving." The entire list of GRASP projects is worth crawling through.
I dunno what all the practical applications of this tech are but all I can say is, I want one.
It does make a distinct sound and sounds like that in a war-zone can have a terrifying effect, psychologically on enemy troops.
They could use it to track autonomous Audis, better than crashing helicopters.
Reminds me of the Manhacks from Half Life.
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Manhack
I think it is important to note that they use fairly sophisticated (multiple times more expensive than the drone itself) motion capture equipment to locate and control the drone.
Also: did you see what it needs for navigation? Bright red lights as landmarks, brightly colored hoops.
It would need much more sophisticated navigation in order to operate outside its little custom-made "cage".
"We've already got quadricopters. And you can control them with an iPhone. And they could already do this sort of maneuvering."
(A) Yes we do. (B) So what? An iPhone is hardly an optimized flight controller. It's a toy. (C) No, they can't. If you can maneuver your quadricopter with your iPhone anywhere near the way this thing can move, I'll eat your shorts.
I am pretty sure that my digestion is safe for the time being.
Avast ye scurvy, this vessel has almost no use! With cameras on every angle she can't go anywhere but Davy Jone's locker without a human skipper. The autonomous flyin' about may look sweet as a maiden but she can't sail her way out of a calm bay at sunset.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Looks like the lightsaber training ball used by Luke
Tryna kill you in your sleep
So y'all need to
Hide your kids, hide your wife
Hide your kids, hide your wife
And hide your husband
Cuz they killin' errbody out here
Very nice. For research purposes, they're using a cheap copter and expensive fixed motion tracking gear. That saves money during debugging crashes. It doesn't have to be that way. With a slightly bigger copter they could carry around 3 axes of fibre-optic gyro, good accelerometers, and a good dynamic GPS. Expect to see that soon, with DoD funding.
Robots are going to have faster reflexes than humans. Humans are stuck at 200ms or so, while computers get faster.
"no it isnt. the source code is proprietary. only the SDK is available and it is highly crippled. please show me how you can EASILY make this work with anything. idiot."
And so it is. The page you linked me to clearly states that it is an SDK, not source code.
Uh, he is safe for the time being seeing as you need a $500k VICON system to pull off the sorts of maneuvers the quad rotors are pulling off in the video. You seriously think this is controlled solely by on board cameras or even one external camera? Why do you think in all these videos you see these glaring red lights? They are the locational cameras (GRASP Lab has 16 I think) identifying where in space the quad rotor is and it's orientation. There is a huge external computation component that you don't see doing most of the heavy lifting required to control this quad rotor.
I'm fairly certain this can't be replicated by a quad rotor with merely an iPhone. That's kinda laughable.
I repeat: if you can maneuver a Parrot AR Drone with your iPhone anywhere near the way this thing can move, I'll eat your shorts. (I think it's obvious that would include flying through both stationary and moving hoops of comparable size.)
And I repeat: "I am pretty sure that my digestion is safe for the time being."
Don't misunderstand: I think the AR Drone is very cool in its own way. It's a great toy. And it might even be useful for a few semi-practical things. But comparable to the device in the video OP linked to? Not.
Yeah, imagine being killed by a flying army of vuvuzelas. Yech.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Did anyone else catch that at the 1 minute mark, the guy who just caught the hoop looks kinda frightened and drops the hoop, as if the Quadrotor wants to go through the hoop again?
Karnal