
Insect-inspired flying robot handles collisions, goes where other robots can’t - robotgal
http://robohub.org/insect-inspired-flying-robot-handles-collisions-goes-where-other-robots-cant/
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alan_cx
With out trying to be childish, my second thought was, "I'd love to whack that
thing with a bat".

I cant think what or how, but it seems to me that are more refined, more
rugged version could give rise to a brilliant game / toy type thing. Yeah, Im
sure their ideas for its uses are way more sensible. But, well, I want to
whack it!!!

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maxerickson
Quidditch?

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dimkar
Yeah, whatever invention is, playing with it seems to be the first wish.
Quidditch should be so much nicer with this robot.

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iandanforth
This looks awesome and I want one. I think Parrot (makers of the AR Drone)
should license this immediately. Their product is fun, but it's still quite
scary to pilot indoors with people around. With this I can imagine playing AR
drone tag!

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Lucy_karpova
I agree. If they start producing this robot as an affordable toy -kids and
parents would love it! And it should give them the best and the most numerous
use cases.

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fpp
Some more info on the project and a video of a similar project at the epfl:

[http://lis.epfl.ch/airburr](http://lis.epfl.ch/airburr)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm90IV3tMjI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm90IV3tMjI)

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sejje
This is such a seemingly simple idea, I'm surprised that many of the toymakers
selling helis for indoor use haven't arrived at this conclusion already.

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ogreyonder
It's astonishingly elegant. I can't imagine nobody's thought of this before,
so it's likely that the implementation is harder than it appears.

The added weight of the cage and gimbal system likely required them to use
expensive ultra-light material and extra strong electronics. The motor on this
thing looks pretty beefy, which in turn would require better driver components
and a bigger (and/or denser) battery.

That said, I hope they can get a production version (made of syrofoam maybe?)
so I can play with it. My main issue with hacking on quadcopters is how
fragile they are.

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durkie
good lord this is awesome. i love the video of it bouncing off that guy's
head...total contrast to whenever you're flying a parrot AR quadcopter and
everyone takes notice and tries to get away from it.

we've been working with a professor at georgia tech about using a drone to aid
in fruit-tree spotting and urban foraging, and i would be soo excited to have
one of these...especially cool that they let it navigate off a magnetic
direction and just say "figure it out". i just picture a future of artificial
scents and pheromones broadcasting off of objects to lure flying robots to
them.

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timje1
I think this is a mature, well engineered approach to collisions - one that
engineers can learn from.

Rather than throwing a hissy fit when it encounters an exception, a mature
system should try to gracefully recover... Because we're never going to have
total control over the inputs / environment. Especially when we're just a
small bug in a big world.

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scrumper
Clever and simple. I like it. There are all sorts of serious uses for this,
some scary, some exciting. Here's a silly one: I saw a large group of people
playing a game of Quiddich in Central Park earlier in the summer. A smaller,
faster version of this would make a great snitch(sp?) for them.

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mistercow
That would solve one of the many, many problems with "Muggle Quidditch". I
have a lot of proposals for how they could turn that into a good game though.

First, ditch the brooms. You're riding unicycles from now on. Second, the
bludgers need to be medicine balls and they need to be tethered to a fleet of
quadrotors flying above using sophisticated algorithms to adjust their flight
paths so that they attack players and veer off when hit with bats. And then
yes, finally, the snitch needs to be a robot.

Then you'll have something I'd be willing to watch people play.

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xerophtye
though unicycles? that sounds HARD :/ why not just run around? (or use those
cool two-wheeled platform type bikes)

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mistercow
Well, a few reasons. Broomstick riding is supposed to be hard, so unicycle
riding seems like a reasonable analogue. Another reason is that it has the
similar aspect of falling off, while still being extremely maneuverable.

And lastly, I have this mental image of a nerdy guy peddling a unicycle like
hell away from a 20 lb flying medicine ball, while another player cruises over
to smack it out of the way with a baseball bat. There is no way any
alternative is going to live up to that vision.

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luis8
Very good idea this solve one of the biggest problems of this type of robots.
However currently flying time rates are too short, so we need more power in
order to use them in practical applications.i hope the graphene super
capacitors can deliver that boost in power that can overcome this issue.

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Lucy_karpova
Neat idea! But what makes you think that graphene super capacitors are the
best option? Why not some combination with solar battery(if it's going to fly
outside) or some other kind of energy source?

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luis8
Because the relation weight/power its outstanding. well i don't think using
solar could help at all,because it will make the robot heavier and it will
need a big area in order to power up the robot which for this type of robots
its not possible i think, and also unless solar cells improve their energy
efficiency this doesnt sound possible yet.

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MechSkep
This is the second worst application of the "animal-inspired" moniker that I
have seen.

Nike calling their sneakers "bio-inspired" because they had leopard spots on
them was the worst.

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narfquat
I think the linkage was appropriate. While reading the title I immediately
thought about the way a housefly repeatedly rams itself into windows (while
not seriously damaging itself) to try and find a way out.

Granted, insects don't fly in bucky-ball-esque gyro cages, but are there any
other types of flying organisms that fly in a similar manner? Definitely not
birds -- as windex commercials have demonstrated.

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dc_ploy
I can assume there are people who look at this for it's military application.
I'm trying to imagine what kind of search and rescue situation this can
handle.

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pedalpete
This also has the added benefit of keeping the rotors from causing harm. You'd
have to actually stick your hand into the sphere in order to cut off a finger
vs some quadcopters which force the operator to be aware.

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jlgreco
Probably not a problem when there is a human flying it, but I wonder how
difficult it would be to get an autopilot to recognise/deal with gimbal lock.

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mistercow
Recognizing gimbal lock wouldn't be very difficult. Using a rotary encoder on
each axis, you could measure their angles and tell if any pair of gimbals was
aligned. And apparently there are techniques for arbitrarily rotating one
gimbal when lock is detected.

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jlgreco
That would require making the gimbals higher tech than they currently are now
though.

I'm wondering if you could perhaps detect it by detecting a sudden unplanned
twist around one axis with an onboard accelerometer.

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mistercow
It doesn't really add that much complexity to the gimbals. Rotary encoders are
extremely inexpensive, and the information would just be interpreted by the
central controller.

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baddox
I wonder why they went with a coaxial rotor and control surfaces rather than a
typical multirotor (e.g. quadcopter), which seems much simpler.

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bri3d
The size (by cross-section surface area or pretty much any other metric) to
thrust ratio is substantially improved, meaning they need a smaller, lighter
ball encasing the unit.

I suspect that the thrust-to-weight ratio is also better since they're
carrying fewer motors and ESCs around at the expense of some servos and
surfaces, which are almost certainly lighter.

Plus the rotors are in a much more advantageous position for containment
within a ball.

I'd be interested in evaluating the efficiency of vectoring prop wash using
control surfaces versus modulating the speed of fixed-pitch rotors. There's
almost certainly something there but I don't know which direction the
comparison would go.

Anecdotally it's much easier to get good yaw authority using some type of
thrust vectoring (control surfaces, tricopter style tilt-rotor, etc) than
using counter-rotation like most quadcopters do as well.

I'd love to build one of these types of machine even sans ball and see how
tough the trade-offs vs. a traditional multirotor are in real life; on the
surface the design seems superior to me.

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baddox
Yeah, I realize the advantages of their design, it just doesn't seem worth it
with the added complexity and (I would guess) reduced maneuverability. But I
guess maneuverability isn't a huge concern, since it's designed to basically
bounce around the environment.

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infinitone
Awesome concept.

But i wonder what if it went into a cave with icicles/sharp thin sticks that
can perhaps go through the holes of the protection.

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sarreph
This is ridiculously cool.

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mutant
How does no comments + 10 points get on the homepage of HN. System makes no
sense.

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rory096
Frequently threads with as few as 3 points make it to the front page. It's
(among other things, obviously) about speed of upvotes on /newest- and given
that posts rarely get more than a couple upvotes before they're knocked off
the front page there, it's a good thing the threshold before things reach the
front is low.

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wellboy
Also upvotes by YC peeps, probably have 3 times more weight than normal ones.

