
PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/phd-student-gets-quadrotor-helicopter-moving-aggressively-20100528/
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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.

~~~
metamemetics
A lot of cognitive science (especially AI related) and cog psychology is DoD
related as well. For FY2010 60% of the US governments total R&D spending is
military 40% non-military.

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hassenben
Reference please?

~~~
metamemetics
[http://budgetinsight.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/research-
and-d...](http://budgetinsight.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/research-and-
development-in-the-fy-2010-defense-budget/)

> _Historically, between 50 and 60 percent of the federal R &D investment is
> made in defense._

>[mentions the American Reinvestment and Recover Act] _However, despite this
shift in R &D investment priorities, defense R&D spending continues to outpace
non-defense R&D spending by $20 billion._

>For psychology claim, my own experience

sry takes a while to respond with /noprocast on

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run4yourlives
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.

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

~~~
ramidarigaz
Or the manhacks in Half Life 2.

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

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andreyf
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?

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slackenerny
$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>

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HeyLaughingBoy
What about the Rotomotion guys? I thought their stuff was also released as
OSS.

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

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

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

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kirubakaran
Or the resistance will "jailbreak" some of these and turn them against their
evil masters.

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Natsu
I wonder what the control system for that looks like?

I had a professor who engineered control systems and I remember him showing me
this giant PDE-filled matrix that described the control system for the
helicopter.

One of his grad students even had a computer simulation where you could try to
fly a helicopter with no control system on it. It was pretty much impossible
to control. Whenever you tried to go forward, you were likely to flip over.

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zitterbewegung
This is interesting. It reminds me of manhacks from half life 2 though which
scares me somewhat but thats probably intensional since its so aggressive.

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chaostheory
I'm sure the DOD would probably want a word with that guy

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dpatru
This was my first thought. It's sad that whenever new technology is developed,
governments think of ways to use the technology to kill people.

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run4yourlives
A simple look a history suggests that 99% of all human invention begins with
looking for a better way of killing each other.

Don't blame governments, we're all like that.

~~~
philwelch
That's kind of a weird thing to say, since the main reason so many inventions
are related to weapons is directly because political entities war with each
other so much. Serial killers, cuckolded husbands, and street gangs don't
usually pay for new weapons inventions the way governments do.

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JanezStupar
Forget recon and bomb usage. I spy swarms of assassin drones. Would make fine
horror story.

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gary201147
As the author suggested, Is there any indication that they aren't
preprogrammed flight trajectories? And with so many cameras, the instrument
setting is so "brute forced" that it seems hard to imagine a setting where
this work could be applied. This <http://heli.stanford.edu/> seems a lot more
impressive to me

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stcredzero
The maneuvers look like something out of The Empire Strikes Back.

If the maneuvering could be calculated locally in relation to sensed objects
and other quad rotors, then robust swarming behavior combined with this degree
of agility is easily achievable.

Small swarms of such quad rotors equipped with video cameras could
autonomously patrol a certain volume around a base vehicle. Low res video
feeds could be used for automatic heuristic recognition of bipedal targets.

Perfect a lightweight weapon like a Gyrojet, and this becomes a very effective
area denial and recon system. Combine this with Taser projectiles and you
could have a very effective crowd control or prison security system.

14 minute battery life doesn't seem like a lot, but with a swarm, individual
units could be programmed to return and perch on a battery exchange dock. Such
a system could be installed on a vehicle like a Humvee or an APC.

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kilian
well...crap. This makes the AR.Drone ( <http://ardrone.parrot.com> ) I've
secretly been craving for the past couple of months seem utterly boring.

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InclinedPlane
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).

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

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mitko
If you find quad-copters doing cool stuff check out also this video:
[http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/18/quad-copter-responds-
to-y...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/18/quad-copter-responds-to-your-
voice-isnt-coming-to-a-toy-store/)

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nitrogen
I love the sound it makes when the rotors speed up to catch the copter after a
maneuver.

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

~~~
scott_s
With respect to the skill displayed in that video, it's different from this
research. The video you linked doesn't have the same precision displayed in
the research; I don't think they'd be able to go from hovering, through a
window, back to hovering as precisely as was shown in with the single copter
craft.

The single copter craft does turns, flips and dances all around, but it's over
a much larger area and nor is the human pilot trying to accomplish a
particular task. I think he's just having fun, free-form style. The key
difference, I think, is that a single copter craft can't change direction as
quickly as the quad copter craft.

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volare
I do not dismiss this research: it is amazing. But, I also think you are
underestimating the skill and sophistication of RC helicopter hobbyists. There
are international competitions involving very complex, but well-defined and
precise maneuvers.

For example, there is a maneuver named "chaos" in which the pilot continuously
pirouettes _while_ continuously flipping _while_ continuously rotating the
axis of the flip _while_ holding the aircraft in a single position a few feet
off the ground. It is tremendously difficult to even visualize this fully.

The research video also reminded me of this video, where an RC pilot lands on
a vertical wall (without velcro):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ2HlePbD20#t=1m07s>

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nitrogen
That was an amazing stunt. Has something like that been used as a plot device
in an action movie yet?

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sp332
There was a stunt at the end of the Italian Job (the new one, of course) where
a stunt pilot actually flew a full-size helicopter around inside a parking
garage. Can't find the clip right now, probably DMCA'd :-/

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perlpimp
Some useful research, in PhD field. Hope he keeps this one, up. Though the
thought is scary if you have to confront one of these things armed with a
tazer or some such nefarious immobilizing device.

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shikind
Is... is it wrong to get turned on by this?

My uncertainty about what I'd actually do with one is equaled only by my
irrational conviction that I nevertheless need one.

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danielnicollet
At this stage, I wonder if there is there a way to move these little beasts
with cameras and weapons without making them too big for windows though...

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ajuc
This is cool.

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

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3pt14159
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 take out a general hiding in an
otherwise public building. Could be used for micro biological/poison attacks,
like anthrax to take out key targets, or as cheap satellites for the 3rd world
to spy on their people.

Of course civilian uses are vast as well, but harder to find really high
priced jobs in the private industry.

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ramidarigaz
Terrifying, but _so damn awesome!_

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motters
Interesting as a media-grabbing stunt, but not terribly useful. There might be
applications in reconnaissance for emergency services or police, but that
market is not very significant. Really roboticists need to be focussing their
efforts on solving problems which will allow the industry to grow and break
out from its traditional niches.

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rbanffy
Nice companions for that little dog-like robot.

The military applications are kind of creepy

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albemuth
But can they interface with Skynet?

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sean12345
I soon as I saw the video I recalled Terminator 3.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpYJg5obUkg>

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stretchwithme
awesome. the first out-of-control robot swarm is gonna be so freakin scary.

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jrockway
If you see me walking around outside with a fishing net draped over me, well,
now you know why.

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mkramlich
Watching that video gave me one of those moments when you think you are seeing
the future. Something from science fiction suddenly brought into the real
world. Amazing achievement from an engineering standpoint. Kudos to the guys
who made it happen!

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nato1138
DOD comment: took the words right out of my fingertips...

