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AirBurr UAV Navigates By Crashing Into Things

Posted by samzenpus on 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."

2 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds like robotics class in college by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  2. Re:Idiotic approach by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can think of a couple of reasons.

    1) For the purpose of saving the weight of radar/sonar/laser devices. It's a small flying device. Weight matters.

    2) For the purpose of saving the cost of radar/sonar/laser devices.