Autonomous Helicopter Navigates Like Bugs
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 10 of November , 2008 at 3:12 am
It’s a sobering fact that most insects have more brainpower, or at least more basic life skills, than even the most modern robots. Small flying insects, for example, use a process called “optical flow” to navigate by translating changes in luminance into the relative speed and proximity of objects around them. The little helicopter in the above video is using some functions developed from these principles of insect navigation by researchers at the University of Maryland to find its way down a corridor.
Why is this exciting? Well, autonomous robot navigation in unfamiliar environments has always been a fairly intensive thing. I mean, have a look at all the hardware Boss has bolted on just to find its way around a 2-D environment. High resolution cameras, lasers, sonar, radar, lidar, GPS… Not to mention a SUVload of computers. This is not especially practical for micro-UAVs. But flying insects can navigate complex environments using this optical flow technique based on little more than the equivalent of low-res (I’d think?) cameras, which is pretty much exactly what you want in a micro-UAV nav system. And, you get the bonus of a freakishly efficient ability to dodge angry hand swipes.
Comments (1)
Category: Biorobotics,Research
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Comment by Steve
Made Monday, 2 of August , 2010 at 4:46 pm
(Insectabots)or whatever other name you may prefer to call them are apparently designed to look and behave like terrestrial species of fauna used to collect all forms of information, visual, physical, spectrographic, etc. having reactionary stealth, computational, sensing and identification abilities operating through a continual feedback loop link with central command. Such devices can also appear as rocks or most anything else potentially remaining on location for long periods of time and seem to be extraterrestrial in nature. During 1993 one of these devices was discovered moving about a few inches off the ground in a horse pasture located in the Hessel Road area of Sebastopol California by a curious child that had been wandering about the pasture. The foot long device emitted no sounds and was disguised as a scarabaeid beetle having colors of brown, green and yellow with extended metal antennae. As soon as the device sensed it was being observed it slowly turned to face the child to ascend vertically three to four feet off the ground to fly away in a spinning fashion at sharp angle disappearing into the sky. Before the device flew away it had been noticed the underside of the machine was completely flat having a polished steel like color and its outer edge curved. Within the same vicinity another artificial flying bug being considerably smaller in size had been noticed by an adult neighbor living one half of a mile away.
Thank you for taking the time to read this true story.
Respectfully,
Steve & actual witnesses
