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DARPA Wants Help Building a Drone That Flies Like a Hawk

Posted by timothy on from the why-not-spiders-like-in-minority-report dept.

DillyTonto writes DARPA has put out a call for ideas on how to build a fast, autonomous, maneuverable UAV that can fly up to 45 mph, navigate without assistance from humans or GPS into and through buildings that are a labyrinth of stairwells, small rooms, narrow hallways and terrorists. DARPA wants this drone to fly like the bird in this awesome hawk POV video that shows it shooting through gaps narrow enough it has to tuck its wings to get through. If you can watch the video without thinking of the forest moon of Endor, there may be some movies you should watch over the holidays.

42 comments

  1. Rather it float like a Butterfly, sting like a Bee by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's the way to do it.

  2. Yes. by MRe_nl · · Score: 1

    Let us all help the Sardaukar build a better ornithopter.
    For the Empire!

    --
    "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
    1. Re:Yes. by rmdingler · · Score: 1
      And if not for the genetic descendants of the prison planet, if they can make one fly like this, I'll take two.

      Really cool footage.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

  3. Play god by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So basically DARPA wants artificial life they can control.

    1. Re:Play god by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So basically DARPA wants artificial life they can control.

      Yes! You are correct.

  4. power by Iamthecheese · · Score: 1

    There are present day computers powerful enough to calculate the physics for that, but they're the very latest gaming rigs and use a kilowatt of juice. Barring advances in algorithms I just can't see how this is going to happen without 4 more doublings of processor power and a huge (hundreds of megabytes) L2/L3 cache. I bet that bird brain was going all out. I would think they're going to have to wait on the "autonomous" side of it for a few years a la the autonomous ground vehicle race.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    1. Re:power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Bird brains don't calculate the physics from first principles, and that's not really necessary even for a robot. The key is a fast feedback loop: am I falling? Do that thing that increases the lift from my wings a bit; am I going up too much? Decrease lift; am I going to break my wings off on that tree that's coming up in 0.6 seconds? Increase lift a bit for 0.4 seconds then tuck wings in; etc. etc. I think the key difficulty here will be realtime object recognition, made harder by rapidly changing lighting conditions, and maybe obtaining fast and accurate enough response from the actuators / motors. The image processing problems mean this is probably a good role for lidar but I'd imagine you'd still need some specialist custom silicon to keep everything within the size and power constraints of a hawk (and lidar does introduce a signature issue that the military might prefer to avoid).

    2. Re:power by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There are present day computers powerful enough to calculate the physics for that

      That is only needed during the design and testing, when a lot of CFD simulations will be needed. But once the bird is deployed, it will just use a lookup table. When you are walking down the street, you don't use physics to calculate the exact length of stride to optimally place your foot. Instead, you just take a step more-or-less like the last one, and then compensate any over/under stride on the next step.

    3. Re:power by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I'm sure that it will use a lookup table, but it's also going to have to build those tables dynamically because due to the nature of mechanical devices. 1) no two are identical and 2) they wear while in use, especially while running near the edge of materials technology, further exacerbating point #1. You really do need a learning control system if you're not in a perfect world, or doing something hilariously easy — which this isn't.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re: power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Take the act of catching a pop-fly ball. One of the heuristics that is believed (through experiments) to be used by humans is to maintain the angle of the ball with a fixed point, such as the horizon. If the angle closes, run forward. If it grows, run backwards. If you continue doing this then you position yourself to where the ball will land without calculating parabolas, speed, etc.

      Brains learn and acquire all kinds of simple heuristics like this. It's fascinating.

      You can program many of these heuristics into computer. The question remains if that is enough. Brains also probably juggle and mix heuristics. E.g. the heuristic for positioning the hand to catch the ball is probably different than positioning your body. The algorithms used are very simple, but the composition is sophisticated.

    5. Re:power by gatkinso · · Score: 1

      Current miniature LIDAR is too heavy and uses too much power. I would guess IR (kinect) but even that is pretty damn hefty.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
    6. Re: power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Relevant?
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZE01bJIgvQRelevant?

    7. Re: power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fixed - sorry
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZE01bJIgvQ

  5. Damnit Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you can watch the video without thinking of the forest moon of Endor

    I watched the video before I finished reading TFS. Came here to comment about the 74-Z...

    Damnit Slashdot.

  6. If you can do something, don't do it for free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not helping for no compensation.

  7. Oh, good by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    Just what we need. When they can stamp this out for pennies, they will truly be able to spread 'democracy' to every corner of the earth.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Oh, good by rmdingler · · Score: 1
      There I was looking at a cool toy, excited like a five-year-old on Christmas morning.

      Alas, we get an abundance of cool tech from military exploits, and this may just be the day's Polyanna cheer, but I see us slowly evolving into a society of post-militaristic peoples. Discounting the Cold War and its few proxy wars in third world nations, no large war between superpowers has occurred in nearly 70 years.

      Globally, poverty levels and deaths of children under five have steadily declined. HoHoHo... it's not just for Christmas anymore.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    2. Re:Oh, good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet tech has continued to evolve exponentially without the need for inter-superpower hot wars to drive it. Call me a pussy-footing liberal if you will, but I for one welcome our new not-quite-so-warlike overlords.

  8. impressive hawk. I know just the guy by raymorris · · Score: 1

    That hawk video is impressive. I know just the guy for the job, smart as heck and he works on machine vision and drones, but early proposals have to be done January 6th.

    1. Re:impressive hawk. I know just the guy by gatkinso · · Score: 2

      This is typical DARPA MO. I don't know when the RFP was issued, but they are known for ridiculously short lead times - because the reason the RFP exists at all is because someone has a working (or damn close to it) prototype.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
    2. Re:impressive hawk. I know just the guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I suspect that many of the military-funded RFPs are like that. I was part of two teams that submitted proposals for a CDMRP (Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program) operated by the DoD for the US Congress. Details of the winning proposals were made public. Our two submissions were superior in every way to the winning proposals, from meeting desired features of the proposals, to levels of expertise, to realistic milestones, to publication records, to institutional support and resources, to various vanity features like big name institutions, the number of degrees of the key participants, etc. Both teams I submitted with were more highly qualified and had better ideas, but didn't get selected. Moreover, there were only 20 proposals submitted, so it can't be the case that ours weren't noticed. The only plausible conclusion is that the contract awards were essentially already made when the RFP went out, and some congressional committee member got to pad the total number of dollars going to his constituents that year.

    3. Re:impressive hawk. I know just the guy by RivenAleem · · Score: 1

      Hawk in slo-mo. http://imgur.com/gallery/Q3njr...

  9. They're joking right? by Dereck1701 · · Score: 1

    We can barely build devices that can navigate a house at a crawl (stairs, furniture, etc) and they want to create something that can navigate thousands of random obstacles at high speed? Real world environments (changing light levels, leafs, webs, wind, etc) are going to play havoc with anything that they do build.

    1. Re:They're joking right? by Livius · · Score: 1

      They're not joking about wanting it.

      Building it might still be a ways away.

  10. Hawks will go extinct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All this will accomplish is to have hawks become an endangered specie, as libertarians and paranoid rednecks will try to shoot every hawk they see.

    1. Re:Hawks will go extinct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Only until the hawks start shooting back.

      Hawks tend to have MUCH better aim than people.

  11. Damnit! And my falcon is just done! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why didn't I build a hawk... :-(

  12. Try this by wingome · · Score: 0

    Load up a few million drones with programs of random instructions. Send them all into the woods. Use the program from the drone that makes it to the other side. I think that's how the hawks do it.

    1. Re:Try this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yea, try that. Because the million monkey idea isn't debunked enough yet.

  13. Why not a gull by rossdee · · Score: 1

    Why not have a drone that flies like a seagull, after all they are more common, and would be less likely to be noticed.

    (and still deadly if you have enough of them (The Birds)

    1. Re:Why not a gull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why not have a drone that flies like a seagull, after all they are more common, and would be less likely to be noticed.

      Only if the enemy is hiding in a trawler.

    2. Re:Why not a gull by Lodlaiden · · Score: 1

      Only if the enemy is hiding in a trawler.

      ...or McDonalds.

      --
      Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
  14. What do you get the agency that has everything? by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 1

    Maybe it's the season, but doesn't this sound like like a bunch of overindulged, adult children in uniforms, sitting around a table trying to figure out what toys they don't yet have, which might be fun to play with? Like, they're so bored with quadcopters now, they want a fucking hawk. Because fuck yeah, hawk. Taxpayers should buy them a mechanical hawk.

    1. Re:What do you get the agency that has everything? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We put a man on the moon using 1960s era tech. The Cold War was fought using "miniature" technology that would be laughable today.

      National security would be much improved if we limited the ability of military and _especially_ intelligence organizations from purchasing new technology. Then they might have to focus on human technology.

      I bet it's worse when it comes to so-called cyber security. I wonder how many billions we've spent on crap like reverse compilers with pie-in-the-sky features when the black hat hackers are skilled enough to reverse engineer code in their head using a hex editor. All the success stories from the NSA probably come from a small team of grey beards, while 20,000 script kiddies are responsible for the useless mass surveillance crapware.

  15. impossible to mimick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This video shows superb flying but not from an untrained bird. The coopers hawk in the video is speeding through staged scenes that the falconer determined by releasing the bird on a path to food just out of the shot. How else would the camera be set up to catch the bird flying unessisarily through the crotch of the trees. Nature is and always will be beyond pur reach

  16. through buildings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who wrote that line? I just had visions of September 11, 2001 in the United States of America.

  17. (Offence) Advanced Research Projects Agency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why is it that DARPA does not focus it's intelligence on advancement on life saving technologies like cancer, AIDS or Stem Cells.

    (There is recent proposal for Cancer research but it's not a priority)

    1. Re:(Offence) Advanced Research Projects Agency by gatkinso · · Score: 1

      Probably for the same reasons that NIH doesn't produce torpedo. Just a guess.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
  18. Bruce Willis or Jan-Michael Vincent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    depending on budget

    Sony because freedom!

  19. In other words... by gatkinso · · Score: 1

    ...it is going to require TWO Gumstix.

    --
    I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
  20. Prototype is already built by gatkinso · · Score: 3, Informative

    Having working in the incestuous realm of DARPA, what I can tell you is that somebody already has a proof of concept pretty much ready to go. Since I have to be billed as "fair" they put out the RFP (with a ridiculously short deadline - which is no problem for the folks with the almost working prototype). This company is in cahoots with the DARPA PM, who in all probability worked at that company in the not too distant past.

    This is how it is at DARPA.

    --
    I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
  21. Insect Better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Speed requirement aside the better approach than a hawk would be a dragonfly for better maneuverability independent of previous flight path.