Autonomous quadrocopter flies through windows, straight into our hearts (video)
By Vlad Savov 
posted May 28th 2010 4:30AM
posted May 28th 2010 4:30AM
[Thanks, William]
posted May 28th 2010 4:30AM
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Oh wow. I want one so much it hurts!
Holy crap I agree!
I wants!
Very interesting. The only challenge is running them outside where wind conditions is not perfect.
@The Joker
That must be the coolest toy I never owned. :D
@The Joker That completely blew my mind, awsome.
@The Joker
You want??
I'm scared.
@Lumi
Well that and to make them operate without those completely surrounding IR emitters (those red lights)! A whole new research project in its own right.
It is impressive as it is, but in the same way that those Darpa challenge autonomous cars drove around urban landscapes, they needed a whole lot of sensory input - laser scanners, cameras etc. It seems in this case they've got a lab surrounded with IR emitters for precise positional feedback.
Remove them and the whole lot stops working. Notice too that the window is out on its own. Try putting the entire wall in place - I'd wager a large wall will disrupt the IR positional data that they receive.
Sorry to be a party pooper, but thats the likely reality.
@Darkroom
Read the specs, it doesn't support flash or third party weaponry.
@AlbanBrooke Brilliant !! lol
does it support multitasking ?
@The Joker : OMG! Put some guns on that thing and give it "swarm intelligence" and it could take out a enemy squad easy.
@The Joker
First go get a VICON system for yourself. :P
@Heliosphan
Actually it's connected via Xbee which is a RF device. It does seem to know the location of the window in the demo, but still might be more practical in real-world than one might initially suspect. I'm sure it'll still take a lot of refinement and testing though.
@Lumi Actually low to moderate wind is not much of a problem for these things. They are inherently unstable and therefore require constant control inputs (in this case by the computer) to maintain stable flight.
When I started flying RC Helicopters I thought wind would be terrible, but since you're already constantly working to maintain stability, adjusting for wind is easy. (Really, flying them manually is very difficult, but wind only makes it slightly more than very difficult.)
@Heliosphan I don't think it would b that hard 2 fly!!! Just give me a spektrum DX-9 2.4ghz controller n I'll show us guys how 2 fly this thing inside, outside, right into a view of ur wifes upskirt!!! LOL
@The Joker
This just got wedged between Boondock Saints and Search for the Holy Grail as my second favorite movie EVER. (I'll let you guess at which is first)
@Heliosphan
Those aren't IR emitters. Those are cameras with a visible light strobe. The heli has reflective markers and the camera is tracking them. It's optical mocap, the cameras look like they are Vicon.
@Brocifer
its being tracked optically by Vicon cameras
@One Love "a[n] enemy squad"
Defined as: "any squad comprised of humans"
It never amazes me that humanity can electric mosquitos that jump through hamster sized mailboxes, yet we can't make a bipedal walk properly... yet.
@buoy
asimo walks and runs pretty good
@buoy
why dose this thing remind me of a flying killer robot.
@Xstream No doubt... Oh wait...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASoCJTYgYB0
@MichaelB I was thinking about those heli from terminator 2 and skynet. Scary images i say.
@Heratiki Humans fall too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZZd9UGV0uI
@buoy I'm surprised ASIMO gets so much fanfare and boston dynamics PETMAN doesn't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67CUudkjEG4
PETMAN > Asimo. Petman reacts dynamically like a real human, it gets pushed off balance but it catches itself and rebalances. Asimo is carefully scripted to walk over stairs and still fails at it. Petman will be replicating other human functions soon enough as well, climbing fences, crawling, etc.
@buoy it never amazes me that you accidentally a whole comment
@Luffy
Can PETMAN do this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg
Oh, half life things, welcome back.
@xsx Manhacks.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a laser beam.
make it bigger, attach a mini gun, and this should aid in sky-net's efforts against the humans
That's the spirit...
@blood69
We see they're somewhat more maneuverable than H-K's or Harvesters.
@keanu096 Oh, if Allspark was still among us...
@keanu096
You mean Google and DARPA- not skynet. Something else caught my eye too. Its inside a net. Nice to see their taking necessary precautions.
Should be mandatory with all autonomous machine tests.
@keanu096 you mean make it smaller, add a laser and let it hunt mosquito's in my house. That I would love to see.
@sntXrrr
Heck, you don't even need quadrocopters for that. Laser mosquito killers are here with us already:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKm8FolQ7jw&feature=related
Where are my damned sunglasses when I need them? Little fuckers aren't gonna get me.
They will hunt you down. The end is nigh!
This is scarier than a predator drone to me. Thousands of these little guys let loose, monitoring a battle field. Stick some kind of weaponry on these, say goodnight
@andrewv the battery life time is very short in most cases 20mins or less. with added weight of weapons, it'll be defo under 10 mins
@lemonus Also they controlled this thing by looking at where it is with 20 external cameras. They also preprogrammed the position of the slots/perches, so this is a long way from the 'copter being able to fly itself outside of that special room.
Still cool though.
@lemonus
not if you would use tiny combustion engines or gas turbines
@lemonus Scale it up slightly with a compact gas turbine generator, small A123 lipo pack, and ultra-capacitors.
@lemonus
10 minutes of 100% terror
I'm making one of these! I have to tell u thats its actually very difficult to make it VTOL and hover. rolling it is adds another dimension of complexity. this work they are doing is amazing. esp that they have multiple quadcopters is amazing. I'm not sure how they are controlling it, can't be manual control for passing through windows, requires too quick reaction times. must be a preprogrammed flight path or using onboard sensors. but WOW
@lemonus
actually vtol, hovering and rolling isn't that difficult, take a look at mikrokopter.net those quadrocopters are stabilized by gyroscopes, accelerometers, air pressure sensors, compass and gps so they can hover on their own and you can setup a function so that they roll on the press of a button
@Xstream
i understand but writing the control logic is difficult. I'm doing it from scratch without downloading other open source code. so i know exactly what it requires and how much fine control over the rotors is needed. u need to take into account not only the roll,pitch and yaw but also the rate at which it changes.
right now i'm trying to implement it on a ARM9 and control over Wi-Fi instead of using a radio controller. but the logic for stabilisation is fairly difficult to implement.
p.s. if the PID logic is not realtime or too slow, u need the frame to be constructed perfectly.
Call me when they make one that you can ride to work.
@Dylbot LMAO... Seconded...