October 21, 2009
Robocopters: Autonomously Flying Inside Buildings!
The fame of robo-copters started on television. Japanese cartoon robots transform from ordinary vehicles to flying helicopters. Who would not know about Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Jazz and Wheeljack? These are the famous characters of the phenomenal movie "Transformers".
Robocopter Flying Inside Building
Robot-helicopters are not new to us, however, researchers at MIT, through the Robust Robotic Group at CSAIL, developed a robotic helicopter capable of autonomously flying inside buildings or other GPS-denied environments. It has an on-board camera and a laser scanner that maps the local environment.
Micro-air vehicle, as the project is named about, presented a very appealing platform for search and rescue operations, civil engineering inspection and a myriad of difficult tasks to which sending a human is impossible. The laser and stereo camera allowed the group to perform obstacle avoidance in 3D. The real-time state-sensing and state-estimation algorithm provided a very stable and robust platform to which the robocopter can freely move without affecting its speed and accuracy.
Click here for the full 'Robocopters Autonomously Flying' article.