

MIT Develops Fully Autonomous Indoor Helicopter [vid] - kloncks
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/4149-indoor-autonomous-helicopter

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stcredzero
I think such vehicles have tremendous military potential, particularly in
urban environments, depending on how well one can meet the challenges of
energy storage. I also think there's tremendous potential in police work and
search and rescue.

Also, given the success of shows like Battlebots, I think there's some good
potential for video media. The requirements for flying platforms to be
lightweight versus the need to to be durable would make a flying robot combat
show very interesting.

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kloncks
The Air Force is also building similar aircrafts but ignoring the mechanics of
flight and concentrating more now on detecting airborne things (smoke,
chemicals, etc)

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tudorachim
Given the four rotor stability, this seems like more of an interesting
perception problem than a control problem. See <http://heli.stanford.edu/> for
examples of the latter.

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the_real_r2d2
I wonder which machine learning algorithms they are using. It looks
interesting for Reinforcement Learning or ANNs.

