Deep Currents

Engineering kids are always up to something interesting in the lab. This team over at Stanford have created something really interesting: an autonomous quadcopter that can navigate around obstacles and stays stable no matter what. (In the video, they explain in five minutes of adorably labored academic-ese.) They’ve hit on the idea that an aircraft outfitted with four helicopter rotors can control its movement precisely in every direction, combined that with a set of sensors and set up an indepedent intelligent control system to run the thing. The video shows these little four-rotored platforms doing some very unique things: navigating obstacle courses, navigating a four-way traffic interchange, staying stable in high wind, and staying stable in the face of being shoved and hit with flying objects. They talk about using these things to find people lost in an avalanche, but it’s clear that they could be handy in a lot of other ways. (Surveillance comes to mind.) I also wonder whether the engineering continues to work for larger-scale vehicles that could carry cargo or people. If nothing else, I’d love to have their collision-avoiding AI driving my car on the highway once they work out the bugs. (Hat tip to Danger Room for noticing this one.)

UPDATE: Here’s a slew of related links from my colleague Brett Mitchell.

Similar to what you sent, but a different application (to track and observe specific targets)

I can’t find the site now, but they have also developed programs that control clusters of these helicopters to coordinate autonomously to put out wildfires which includes everything from picking up water from nearby lakes to optimizing where the various helicopters should drop the water to put out the fire in the shortest amount of time. (As you said, not hard to guess at the classified objectives behind this un-class research given the people that fund this stuff!)

Bipedal robot designed to recover wounded soldiers (actually out of the academic labs and into the commercialization phase)

Quadrapedal gas-powered robot designed to bring supplies to war-torn areas where wheeled vehicles can’t go

A spoof on the past video that is too good not to pass along:

A smaller battery-powered quadrupedal robot used to test more sophisticated AI on extreme terrain

A project that has brought you one step closer to avoiding collisions in your car

Technology to enhance soldier survivability (not AI)

Other sites with related research

Written: July 10th, 2008