AirBurr UAV Navigates By Crashing Into Things

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 4, 2013 @05:50AM from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept.

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."

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Idiotic approach by bluefoxlucid · 2013-03-04 05:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

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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