PhD Student gets quadrotor helicopter moving aggressively
geek.com
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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.
There were a couple of interesting discussions at the prefectural technology incubator about possible applications for research which was in the news at the time. It was a (very early prototype of a) man-portable cloaking device. Clearly, we decided, it was destined for the Tokyo fashion scene.
I'm not sure if the non-military clause in their constitution means they can't do military research.
Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled the money is there to advance the field, I just wish it wasn't coming from a bunch of dickheads trying to strap guns to it.
I guess since the conventional wisdoms says pornography is the biggest catalyst for new media adoption, it shouldn't be a surprise that killing people drives the other engineering fields forward.
The market is a much harsher master when it comes to fiscal accountability. Stuff doesn't get funded unless it's going to make money. Military spending is a magical well of infinite money with little accountability. You can think up any project you want and get money to do it so long as you say you're going to strap a gun on your robot, or that the decentralized communication network is really to help survive a nuke attack.
I used to work in bioinformatics and money from the typical funding sources was getting tight in the late 90s, early 00s. After 9/11, my department just recast every project as "terrorist bio-defense" and was financially refueled with defense money.
Um, what? DARPA was funding it for a reason. How do you kill someone with a network packet? Quite simply. The packet contains "Hey, sarge, go here and kill those guys." Without modern communication you don't have a modern military.
Reliable and secure communication technology is what enables the military to function. Without it, all the weapons technology in the world wont do you any good. So on a moral level, if you are against war you should actually find working as a researcher on communication technology more reprehensible than working on weapons. On an intuitive level I would guess that the breakdown or compromise of military communication has resulted in a greater loss of life than advances in robotics.
The reason why I'm pointing this out is that the real world isn't as simple as "a bunch of dickheads trying to strap guns to [robots]". You're making a simplification because it's convenient, but that simplification is morally inconsistent with approving of DARPA's work on the Internet. The fact that technology has a dual use is something we all have to deal with as researchers. But I don't think it helps matters by treating the issue as a binary.
Up to this point, yes. Not many robots. I suspect the next 300 years will change that ratio hugely. Networks won't kill people...bots with guns will kill people.
It's part of the researcher mindset to rationalise their (enjoyable, paid, 'important') work, otherwise it wouldn't get done. What is the likely result over the long term? Probably not something most researchers are too worried about.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department," says Werner von Braun.
Dickheads?
>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
Throughout history all great minds and technological advances were close to defense development. This here internet is an example, GPS another. Good things come from war competition thats the rub.
I agree things are made/innovated on outside of war, but somewhere along the line most technology is defense driven or funded.
What was the Wright brothers invention used for first? Later came commercial flight.
The solar system research is driven by science but the science programs are largely defense supported and dual purpose. For instance, many of the shuttle trips have a defense purpose or classified payloads. Even the trip to the Moon was for defense leverage on Earth.
From Archimedes to Tesla to science and technology innovation today, most technological advances are closely linked to defense funding or war technology.
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.
And I mention this because that's just the direct application of these two devices with no (significant) new research necessary.
While the news is flooding with doom and gloom (and with some justification), times are getting interesting real quicklike where few people are looking.
Terrifying.
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.
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
The interesting part to me is the overshoot you see when the quadrotor shoots through the window, then pulls back nearer into a resting position. This implies that the control software can work out a dynamic trajectory (one where the quadrotor wouldn't be able to hover at every point along the trajectory), then reconcile it with a desired end point that won't fit onto the trajectory.
That sounds simple, but many walking robots still can't do that -- their gaits are designed so they could freeze in place at any time and still not fall over.
That sounds like a lot, but the motion capture system can accurately track things with sub-millimeter precision at, at least, 100fps. The Hummingbird is very sophisticated, with a 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis magnometer, 3-axis gyro and high performance brushless motors, and of course, the R&D cost for developing all of it.
DIYDrones has a lot of good info on hacking these together, but you won't get the performance you're seeing in that movie.
I've talked to people who are trying to build a poor man's version of these and they're aiming for 600-800, but it's not going to be as high performance.
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.
Don't blame governments, we're all like that.
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.
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).
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.
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
In this project they are using Vicon to determine the position of the quadrotor and the window. Once that information is processed, the quadrotor is properly controlled and has good enough "feedback", the human control can no longer be a match for the precision of a computer.
My uncertainty about what I'd actually do with one is equaled only by my irrational conviction that I nevertheless need one.
But it looks like it has too many degrees of freedom to make such fast/complicated manoeuvres steered by human.
Of course civilian uses are vast as well, but harder to find really high priced jobs in the private industry.
Sure - the fun factor of the complete control is gone, but the usability goes through the roof.
Besides - the more direct control is the more predictable behaviour of this vehicle can be.
I don't think every possible route between 2 points will be possible even using these vehicles. So steering this will probably look more like RTS - I pick control points, unit chooses the path.
This can cause some pain.
The military applications are kind of creepy