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Testing AI Methods With FlightGear

Posted by timothy on from the crash-as-often-as-you-want dept.

mikejuk writes "The open source flight simulator Flight Gear is great fun but it can also be used for serious research. Suppose you want to develop a drone that can roam the seas and spot debris so that ships can be directed to it and pick it up. It's a good idea, but how do you test your methods? The obvious way is to take to the sea and fly a drone over real debris and see what happens. It uses a lot of fuel and generates a lot of sea sickness. Why not just fly a simulated drone over a simulated sea and save the sea sickness? This is what Curtis Olson, project manager at FlightGear and he explains how to get OpenCV to use the simulator as if it was a camera."

4 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Drones get seasick? by Dynedain · · Score: 4, Informative

    The obvious way is to take to the sea and fly a drone over real debris and see what happens. It uses a lot of fuel and generates a lot of sea sickness.

    If it's a drone, how is there sea sickness?

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    1. Re:Drones get seasick? by kidgenius · · Score: 2, Informative

      They are implying that you are controlling the drone from a boat on the sea. Thus you would get sea-sick.

    2. Re:Drones get seasick? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Informative

      You would still have to "seed" the search area with identifiable items so that your test is proper, and clear the search area for the "no results" outcome, rather than simply relying on whatever is drifting around when you got there.

      You know, actually engineer a proper test environment...

  2. Re:What debris? by gman003 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Overboard shipping containers. Search-and-rescue (aka find the bodies). Security (if it can spot debris, it can spot actual ships). Oil slicks, possibly.

    Also, if there's something *continually* spitting out debris or something similar, tracking it down to stop it would be important.