RoboCopters Perform Extreme Acrobatics

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 11 of August , 2008 at 4:55 am

Last year, we wrote about some R/C helicopters from Georgia Tech that were able to land on 60 degree slopes under computer control. Looks like Stanford has its own autonomous helicopter program, and they’ve been able to teach their helicopters to do all sorts of crazy stuff without anyone at the controls. The acrobatics in the following video are not preprogrammed maneuvers… A human pilot first performs some sample sequences, and a computer “watches” the trajectory of the helicopter and figures out how to duplicate (and improve upon) them. After the autonomous acrobatics in the video, you’ll see a set of six sample trajectories in color (flown by a puny human pilot) as well as a seventh trajectory (in white) which is what the computer calculates to be the ideal representation of the maneuvers:

There’s a ton of fancy math involved (read the paper here), but the upshot is that a computer can learn how to fly a helicopter better than an expert, after simply watching the expert fly for a while. According to Stanford, “in all cases, the autonomous helicopter’s performance exceeds that of our expert helicopter pilot’s demonstrations.” In of itself, this is not surprising, but the key here is that nobody has to program the robot to do anything specific. Programming robots to do what you want them to do is one of the biggest obstacles to practical robotics since it generally takes a substantial amount of knowledge and skill. Software like this, which allows robots to watch us and teach themselves, has a great deal of promise. And not just for helicopters… It’s also good for making omelettes.

You can see more vids on the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter Project’s YouTube channel.

[ Stanford Autonomous Helicopter ] VIA [ AI Robotics ]

Comments (2)

Category: Research

Add this post to

Del.icio.us -

Digg

2 Comments

Comment by Iron Man

Made Monday, 11 of August , 2008 at 10:44 am

Let’s just make sure the robot never watches us kill.

Comment by frank burns

Made Friday, 14 of November , 2008 at 12:24 pm

Whilst watching Stanford’s release video of their gyro-helicopter I noticed in it’s Air Wave patterns, there may be room for scientific research to determine how much faster aircraft can fly, by evaluating the cycle air currents between layers in the stratosphere. It’s just a thought but it may help reduce our fuel usage if scientists were interested within this field.

Comment by sandrar

Made Thursday, 10 of September , 2009 at 4:05 pm

Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. :) Cheers! Sandra. R.