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PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

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Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#31

Post by thaumaturgy »

andreyf wrote: post #29
thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

Nice! This is more of what I'd like to see on HN.

Might 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?

None 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.

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#32

Post by ramidarigaz »

ErrantX wrote: post #22
run4yourlives wrote: post #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.

It reminds me heavily of some of the bots in The Terminator movies.

Or the manhacks in Half Life 2.

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#33

Post by whimsy »

run4yourlives wrote: post #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.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. When I saw it, I instantly thought of Man Hacks from Half Life 2 - flying drones with buzz-saws attached. They were far less maneuverable than these quadcopters. Buzz-saws are for chumps, though - I'm sure these things could carry more than sufficient C4 to ensure that any human-sized target was eliminated completely in the sort of way that their relatives hope their dental records are up to date.

Terrifying.

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#34

Post by barrkel »

ajuc wrote: 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.

How 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.

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#35

Post by ramidarigaz »

3pt14159 wrote: post #4
ajuc wrote: 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.

That 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 t…

Terrifying, but so damn awesome!

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#36

Post by silversmith »

run4yourlives wrote: post #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.

Obligatory Half-Life 2 reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PEPt2OCYSk#t=2m00s

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#37

Post by dschobel »

Serious 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.

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#38

Post by slackenerny »

andreyf wrote: post #29
thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

Nice! This is more of what I'd like to see on HN.

Might 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?

$100 in parts, according to this guy: 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://diydrones.com

Re: PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively

#39

Post by starkfist »

dschobel wrote: post #37

Serious 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.

In the USA, no, not really.
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