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PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

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Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#11

doesn't seem that crazy when you see someone doing this kind of stuff without computer assistance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zzhriAN9Bc

A human has a really good vision system. We can easily differentiate the window (for example) from the rest of the environment without problem. Also, we have a pretty good 3D system, and with practice we can process the relative position of objects and use this processed information to control the helicopter/quadrotor.

In this project they are using Vicon to determine the position of the quadrotor and the window. Once that information is processed, the quadrotor is properly controlled and has good enough "feedback", the human control can no longer be a match for the precision of a computer.

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#12
This 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).

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#14
Holy. 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.

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#16

This 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).

Looks pretty smooth to me... I'd give it >10fps for sure.

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#17
post #2

This is cool. But it looks like it has too many degrees of freedom to make such fast/complicated manoeuvres steered by human.

Isn'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.

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#20
post #8

Am I the only one who thinks a future filled with robots like this is scary and pretty undesirable?

Speak for yourself, I look forward to joining the resistance and shooting at them all day long.

Who are you kidding, the resistance is going to have open source versions of all these things shooting back.
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