DailyDirt: More Robot Helicopters

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Feb 2nd 2011 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Autonomous vehicles are just plain cool. Sure, there are robot cars that can drive themselves around -- but flying robots are really the bots to watch. In just a few years, little autonomous helicopters will be everywhere... watching your every move. Okay, maybe Big Brother isn't going to use flying cameras, but kids' toys are going to be really impressive soon. OLPC will be nothing compared to the programmable toys that will be in more and more homes. Just imagine a living room filled with blinking 12:00 clocks.... hmm. Anyway, here are a few more autonomous helicopter videos for your amusement.

MIT has an indoor autonomous helicopter that can go where there's no GPS available. Even in unfamiliar buildings, this bot can map its indoor environment... and it looks like it'd be a great companion in a laser-tag arena. [url]
At another university, Stanford's autonomous helicopter can go outside and learns how to fly by watching a human pilot. This isn't a quadrotor bot, so it's gotta fly with a bit more skill to perform its aerial stunts. [url]
The University of Pennsylvania has a quadrotor bot that flips and can jump through hoops. If this bot turns into Skynet, at least it'll be easily overpowered by some Velcro.... [url]

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Filed Under: autonomous, helicopters, quadrotors

6 Comments

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Hephaestus (profile), 2 Feb 2011 @ 4:58pm

The U of Penn one flys like a humming bird when it goes through verticle windows, pretty neat.
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abc gum, 2 Feb 2011 @ 5:25pm

"Okay, maybe Big Brother isn't going to use flying cameras,"
-or -
maybe they already are

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-456623/Flying-saucer-police-spy-camera-takes-skies.ht ml
http://onedira.blogspot.com/2007/10/british-police-microdrone-hovering-spy.html
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Feb 2011 @ 6:20pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ozHoP_YThRI

Weapon systems? Yea we got those...
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Feb 2011 @ 7:26pm

The U of Penn bot you posted here is the same one blogged about earlier here on Techdirt - it's the one that has been used to construct a building skeleton. This flying demo was from before they were able to do the more precise construction.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100709/04423410151/dailydirt-robot-helicopters.s html
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Michael Ho (profile), 2 Feb 2011 @ 7:27pm

Re:
heh. I thought the same thing... But I think there are other folks working on "humming bird" flying robots. Perhaps a topic for a future DailyDirt post. :)
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AR (profile), 2 Feb 2011 @ 9:05pm

Flying robospy?
Yea, I've got a "kids toy" for that...BB gun
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