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PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively
- ajuc 16y agoThis is cool. But it looks like it has too many degrees of freedom to make such fast/complicated manoeuvres steered by human.
- 3pt14159 16y agoThat is what they need us (ie, programmers) for. Layers of programming jobs for a militarized swarm of these things. From twitch decisions to overall unit formation and attach plans. These would also be useful as bomb delivery devices. Think about it flying straight down, either reversed propeller spin or (more likely) upside down flight to avoid AA fire then sneaking through a window with plastic/gel explosives to take out a general hiding in an otherwise public building. Could be used for micro biological/poison attacks, like anthrax to take out key targets, or as cheap satellites for the 3rd world to spy on their people. Of course civilian uses are vast as well, but harder to find really high priced jobs in the private industry.
- ramidarigaz 16y agoTerrifying, but so damn awesome!
- viraptor 16y agoIsn't that thinking about the control on a very low level? Why do you need to know about the degrees of freedom -- if you're able to say exactly where you want the device to be, do you need any more details about the path? Sure - the fun factor of the complete control is gone, but the usability goes through the roof.
- ajuc 16y agoI just like to feel in control of machine, here it wouldn't be possible. Besides - the more direct control is the more predictable behaviour of this vehicle can be. I don't think every possible route between 2 points will be possible even using these vehicles. So steering this will probably look more like RTS - I pick control points, unit chooses the path. This can cause some pain.
- barrkel 16y agoHow many degrees of freedom do you have in the location of your hand with your elbow bent? Back, forwards, up, down, left, right, rotation in any direction around the wrist - it's pretty full.
- zitterbewegung 16y agoThis is interesting. It reminds me of manhacks from half life 2 though which scares me somewhat but thats probably intensional since its so aggressive.
- thaumaturgy 16y agoNice! This is more of what I'd like to see on HN.
- andreyf 16y agoMight be asking too much, but I'd also like to see a thread discussing the possible parts, schematics, and source code I could use to hack one of these together myself :) To start: what kind of rotors are those? Are they expensive?
- thaumaturgy 16y agoNone of the hardware construction looks all that expensive. (I've watched the video a few times, tried to catch a few details.) They're pretty high-speed motors, obviously, and otherwise lightweight construction. The real trick is how they're getting them to calculate vectors. They're certainly not just remote controlled -- not unless they had an awful lot of takes of that 3" clearance shot -- so that raises the question, are they precalculating the vectors, or are they using some really advanced method to calculate them on-the-fly (so to speak)? If they're precalculating, then the impressive thing here is the method they've developed to get these things to do tricks with rotors. If they're doing on-the-fly calculation, then I really want to know what kind of sensor they're using. I don't know of anything available on the hobbyist market with that kind of resolution and speed. EDIT: Well, this is embarrassing. It spells out the answers to my questions right in the linked article. :-( Hooray for not paying attention.
- slackenerny 16y ago$100 in parts, according to this guy: http://vicacopter.com http://vicacopter.com I tried (unsuccessfully) to make his design a year ago and it was more like $300 though, and that assuming you have the RF equipment. Guy works at NASA I think. The claim that his is the only fully open source autopilot is to my knowledge true. No docs or schematics though, but these could be adapted from other projects, http://mikrokopter.de http://mikrokopter.de http://diydrones.com http://diydrones.com
- 16y ago
- matthavener 16y agodoesn't seem that crazy when you see someone doing this kind of stuff without computer assistance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zzhriAN9Bc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zzhriAN9Bc
- scott_s 16y agoWith respect to the skill displayed in that video, it's different from this research. The video you linked doesn't have the same precision displayed in the research; I don't think they'd be able to go from hovering, through a window, back to hovering as precisely as was shown in with the single copter craft. The single copter craft does turns, flips and dances all around, but it's over a much larger area and nor is the human pilot trying to accomplish a particular task. I think he's just having fun, free-form style. The key difference, I think, is that a single copter craft can't change direction as quickly as the quad copter craft.
- volare 16y agoI do not dismiss this research: it is amazing. But, I also think you are underestimating the skill and sophistication of RC helicopter hobbyists. There are international competitions involving very complex, but well-defined and precise maneuvers. For example, there is a maneuver named "chaos" in which the pilot continuously pirouettes while continuously flipping while continuously rotating the axis of the flip while holding the aircraft in a single position a few feet off the ground. It is tremendously difficult to even visualize this fully. The research video also reminded me of this video, where an RC pilot lands on a vertical wall (without velcro): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ2HlePbD20#t=1m07s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ2HlePbD20#t=1m07s
- thefool 16y agoAm I the only one who thinks a future filled with robots like this is scary and pretty undesirable?
- mrcharles 16y agoSpeak for yourself, I look forward to joining the resistance and shooting at them all day long.
- thefool 16y agoWho are you kidding, the resistance is going to have open source versions of all these things shooting back.
- kirubakaran 16y agoOr the resistance will "jailbreak" some of these and turn them against their evil masters.
- fuzzmeister 16y agoA crowbar would likely be a more effective method of dispatching them, from prior experience.
- JesseAldridge 16y agoNo, but what're you gonna do? Ban technology?
- rbanffy 16y agoNice companions for that little dog-like robot. The military applications are kind of creepy
- InclinedPlane 16y agoThis is pretty cool. However, as a technical note for others, if you decide to develop a state of the art fast-moving RC helicopter I suggest you record your experiments with a video camera that has a higher frame rate than, seemingly, 5fps. Edit: my apologies, after re-watching the video it looks fine. It must have just been a problem on my end (although I've never seen anything like that from youtube before).
- viraptor 16y agoLooks pretty smooth to me... I'd give it >10fps for sure.
- chaostheory 16y agoI'm sure the DOD would probably want a word with that guy
- dpatru 16y agoThis was my first thought. It's sad that whenever new technology is developed, governments think of ways to use the technology to kill people.
- run4yourlives 16y agoA simple look a history suggests that 99% of all human invention begins with looking for a better way of killing each other. Don't blame governments, we're all like that.
- philwelch 16y agoThat's kind of a weird thing to say, since the main reason so many inventions are related to weapons is directly because political entities war with each other so much. Serial killers, cuckolded husbands, and street gangs don't usually pay for new weapons inventions the way governments do.
- sliverstorm 16y agoYet, this is really only because every other government is doing the exact same thing. An arms race naturally has a self-defense component.
- baddox 16y agoYou don't think the DOD has tons of this stuff under its belt already?
- electromagnetic 16y agoIf it doesn't already, it will do soon. 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... oh look, the guy just got a DOD research grant.
- run4yourlives 16y agoHoly. Crap. Imagine what could become of this research in 5-10 years of sustained development? God help the poor sucker that needs to deal with one of those things when coupled with less than benevolent intentions. Imagine five of these, armed and working together? Good bye urban combat, hello robotic assassins.
- ErrantX 16y agoIt reminds me heavily of some of the bots in The Terminator movies.
- niallsmart 16y agoThat's exactly what I thought. As a clunky non-flying biped, I for one welcome our new quadrotor overlords.
- ramidarigaz 16y agoOr the manhacks in Half Life 2.
- brown9-2 16y agoIf the quadrotor helicopter gives you the willies, get a whiff of BIGDOG and his cousin LittleDog, which can accomodate rugged or unstable terrain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUQsRPJ1dYw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUQsRPJ1dYw
- jerf 16y agoAnd what is on BigDog's back? A pack of six of these buggers and support infrastructure for them (larger battery, for instance, or a generator). Localized air surveillance and potentially semiautonomous to boot. And I mention this because that's just the direct application of these two devices with no (significant) new research necessary. While the news is flooding with doom and gloom (and with some justification), times are getting interesting real quicklike where few people are looking.
- whimsy 16y ago
- JanezStupar 16y agoForget recon and bomb usage. I spy swarms of assassin drones. Would make fine horror story.
- nato1138 16y agoDOD comment: took the words right out of my fingertips...
- albemuth 16y agoBut can they interface with Skynet?
- sean12345 16y agoI soon as I saw the video I recalled Terminator 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpYJg5obUkg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpYJg5obUkg
- dschobel 16y agoSerious question, is there anything driving mobile robotics research besides the defense dept? I spent my grad school time in a robotics lab and it always bummed me out that anytime you see something amazing like this it's invariable funded by a military research agency which can't wait to strap a gun to the damned thing. Same thing for computer vision, except it was all about surveillance.
- starkfist 16y agoIn the USA, no, not really.
- blhack 16y agoSo where is this different? And how? Who is funding this outside of the US and for what?
- erik 16y agoApparently a lot of robotics work in Japan is aimed at assisting the elderly and making up for labor shortages.
- patio11 16y agoCommon topics here include assisting the elderly, industrial automation, disaster response, (minorly) entertainment, (minorly) consumer goods, and one other application area I studiously ignored because smart foreigners have no opinions about Article 9. There were a couple of interesting discussions at the prefectural technology incubator about possible applications for research which was in the news at the time. It was a (very early prototype of a) man-portable cloaking device. Clearly, we decided, it was destined for the Tokyo fashion scene.
- starkfist 16y agoThe japanese do a lot of robot research and AFAIK most of it is not military. I'm not sure if the non-military clause in their constitution means they can't do military research.
- perlpimp 16y agoSome useful research, in PhD field. Hope he keeps this one, up. Though the thought is scary if you have to confront one of these things armed with a tazer or some such nefarious immobilizing device.
- Natsu 16y agoI wonder what the control system for that looks like? I had a professor who engineered control systems and I remember him showing me this giant PDE-filled matrix that described the control system for the helicopter. One of his grad students even had a computer simulation where you could try to fly a helicopter with no control system on it. It was pretty much impossible to control. Whenever you tried to go forward, you were likely to flip over.
- danielnicollet 16y agoAt this stage, I wonder if there is there a way to move these little beasts with cameras and weapons without making them too big for windows though...
- kilian 16y agowell...crap. This makes the AR.Drone ( http://ardrone.parrot.com http://ardrone.parrot.com ) I've secretly been craving for the past couple of months seem utterly boring.
- nitrogen 16y agoI love the sound it makes when the rotors speed up to catch the copter after a maneuver.
- mkramlich 16y agoWatching that video gave me one of those moments when you think you are seeing the future. Something from science fiction suddenly brought into the real world. Amazing achievement from an engineering standpoint. Kudos to the guys who made it happen!
- stretchwithme 16y agoawesome. the first out-of-control robot swarm is gonna be so freakin scary.
- jrockway 16y agoIf you see me walking around outside with a fishing net draped over me, well, now you know why.
- gary201147 16y agoAs the author suggested, Is there any indication that they aren't preprogrammed flight trajectories? And with so many cameras, the instrument setting is so "brute forced" that it seems hard to imagine a setting where this work could be applied. This http://heli.stanford.edu/ http://heli.stanford.edu/ seems a lot more impressive to me
- shikind 16y agoIs... is it wrong to get turned on by this? My uncertainty about what I'd actually do with one is equaled only by my irrational conviction that I nevertheless need one.
- motters 16y agoInteresting as a media-grabbing stunt, but not terribly useful. There might be applications in reconnaissance for emergency services or police, but that market is not very significant. Really roboticists need to be focussing their efforts on solving problems which will allow the industry to grow and break out from its traditional niches.
- mitko 16y agoIf you find quad-copters doing cool stuff check out also this video: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/18/quad-copter-responds-to-your-voice-isnt-coming-to-a-toy-store/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/18/quad-copter-responds-to-y...
- stcredzero 16y agoThe maneuvers look like something out of The Empire Strikes Back. If the maneuvering could be calculated locally in relation to sensed objects and other quad rotors, then robust swarming behavior combined with this degree of agility is easily achievable. Small swarms of such quad rotors equipped with video cameras could autonomously patrol a certain volume around a base vehicle. Low res video feeds could be used for automatic heuristic recognition of bipedal targets. Perfect a lightweight weapon like a Gyrojet, and this becomes a very effective area denial and recon system. Combine this with Taser projectiles and you could have a very effective crowd control or prison security system. 14 minute battery life doesn't seem like a lot, but with a swarm, individual units could be programmed to return and perch on a battery exchange dock. Such a system could be installed on a vehicle like a Humvee or an APC.