Robot Planes and Helicopters Taught Aerobatics 73
holy_calamity writes "MIT and Georgia Tech researchers are teaching small robotic aircraft some impressive stunts. MIT's RC plane's can take off and land from vertical perches (video), while the Georgia Tech helicopter can land on slopes of up to sixty degrees, by flipping backwards into freefall as it lands (video)."
One of the best Helicoptor pilots (Score:5, Interesting)
Alan Szabo Jr
Re:One of the best Helicoptor pilots (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One of the best Helicoptor pilots (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:One of the best Helicoptor pilots (Score:5, Interesting)
oh yeah, and i flew well outside visual range. thats what the video camera is for. radio and reciever were tested to 1.5 miles, probably good to at least 2 on a good day.
the army can have as many as they want for $2000 apiece. screw hardening, the enemy can knock down 99% of them and they will still be cheaper than any "real" military UAV ive heard of.
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For tactical use, something small enough and cheap enough to have in a box in the back of the truck for immediate recce purposes might be of interest. A platoon commander would love to be able to answer "What's happening half a mile over there" at will.
Of course, I'm mostly just guessing.
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Screw the $2000 version. For $250 (each, in quantities of 20+) I can give you a UAV with a 30 minute flight time and remote video at a 1 mile range that will fit [no-tools disassembled] inside a shoebox for carrying*, with a MTBF of 1000 hours [in the air]. $10 each for sets of rx/tx crystals, leaving channel a
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First, make your helicopters weigh only 3kg...
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The stunts themselves aren't particularly eye-catching. The first (landing the chopper on the slope) is similar to what I was taught as a pilot for emergency landing procedure on an upslope - approach on the fast side, then "pull back" to climb up the slope as close to the ground as you can without touching. As you climb, your airspeed will drop unusually quickly, and you'll "drop" onto the upwards slope.
The latter stunt is proof that when you connect a very large engine to a very light air
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You're looking at the wrong videos. The "Whoah, just whoah" was a response to this one [youtube.com], not the ones linked to in the summary.
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Ok, gotcha now. This is pretty !@# kewl. Now, picture that helicopter at 100% real size. Now picture yourself as a passenger in said aircraft. Then it's more like whoh, just WEARFGH.. BLEHWHAHAH...
No kidding. I was in the 19th Special Forces Group of the Utah National Guard, and I got some nap-of-the-earth helicopter rides during exercises that were better than any roller coaster ride I've ever been on, and that was straight and level compared to the mildest tricks Szabo was doing in that video.
Re:One of the best Helicoptor pilots (Score:4, Funny)
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Joke aside, Mr. Szabo Jr.'s fingers are really golden. I wish I could see them working the gymbals but it seems that the bloody cameraman finds every single time the 'copter to be more interesting than the hand work. That's a shame!
Not RC (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless the controls are issued by a remote computer?
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Re:Not RC (Score:4, Informative)
The controls, cameras, everything is not on the plane. The plane/heli are just simple cheap RC toys, controlled remotely by expensive processors and sensors.
I, for one, ... (Score:5, Funny)
But, I suspect that we'll soon be chased around by flying advertisements!
[mechanical voice]: "Wait, Mr. Smith, stop running! I've got to tell you about Splam!"
(Sound of one flying ad machine shooting down another)
[second mechanical voice, swooping in]: "Don't listen to that guy! Splastic is the new Splam!!!"
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But you had me at "I, for one,
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milestone (Score:5, Interesting)
This is due to the fact that the overall system is highly nonlinear, scarcely controllable, (since the control surfaces have little to no effect), and also not very well known in such conditions.
Whenever they can handle this problem in a systematic and rigorous way, (that is without ad-hoc quick fixes), i'd say that a milestone in control science will have been reached.
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The opposite may be true; I think it most likely this was achieved by machine learning rather than control theory using programming by demonstration, reinforcement learning, etc. Classical linear control theory is nice and formal, but formalisms can limiting rather than empowering when you fail to think beyond the narrow limits of
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GP: Can you describe more what you mean by scarcely controllabe? Something's controlling the plane's movement, why couldn't it be receiving signals from an external controller (person or software)? Or do you mean those kind of maneuvers could only be done by a computer?
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Autonomous learning techniques can help, to a certain extent, but i personally think that they cannot do the whole job, as
Scarcely Controllable (Score:2)
An airplane is controlled by movable flaps on the wings and tail. The pressure of the air moving against these flaps as the plane is flying causes the plane to change direction. See here for details [rc-airplane-world.com]. The key to how the control surfaces work is that air is moving over them. It's all about airspeed.
The problem here is that when the plane is hovering nose up, there is no air moving past the control surfaces. Well almost none, the tail gets a
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Not quite true here: in the video, you can see that the ailerons are being used to counteract the torque. The large deflection angles, though, do indicate that there is very little airflow over the ailerons.
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This is due to the fact that the overall system is highly nonlinear, scarcely controllable, (since the control surfaces have little to no effect), and also not very well known in such conditions.
What if you had a very high degree of positional awareness? Wouldn't that make it a lot easier? I'm asking because I
Can I get that software... (Score:5, Funny)
Mildly impressive (Score:2)
That's nice, but I only find it mildly impressive. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's surely no major difference between the algorithm to pilot an RC plane/heli as shown in the videos and the algorithm to pilot a virtual plane/heli in a flight simulation.
However, here are the nice news, that means that you can safely and precisely auto-pilot RC planes/helis, which could lead to interesting domestic uses. I could bet that within the next 15 years, every self-respecting Slashdotter will have a fully automa
MIT's RC plane's what? (Score:2)
Maybe it is time for TPB to get RAIDed again?
Convair Pogo (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/convair_pogo.htm [si.edu]
--Paul
I wonder if this is the skilled RC pilot they saw? (Score:2)
Re:I wonder if this is the skilled RC pilot they s (Score:1)
Yeah, but ... (Score:2)
Does is scale? (Score:1)
Combine this with the fullauto shotgun helicopter (Score:1)
I'm scared of the capabilities of these things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Po_acmAJnU [youtube.com]
do you still remember the air france crash? (Score:1)
Military drones. (Score:1)
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Unmanned drones don't do that unless they can deliver a nuke payload. If you want them to selectively take out individual targets, which seems way more feasible in the short term, you're not doing anything to destroy an enemy's capacity to keep fighting. You're just building resentment against fo
I'm reminded of something here. (Score:2)
Here's Another impressive autonomous UAV video (Score:2)
The BYU autonomous aircraft can fly in precise aerobatic formations. And unlike the examples above, they BYU planes seem to have all of their autonomous control electronics on-board the aircraft.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfLwbW-R3IE [youtube.com]
Robot Planes and Helicopters Taught Aerobatics (Score:1)
20 degrees? (Score:3, Interesting)
(1) how much of that limit has to do with the design of the model helis? I fly model helicopters, and they (tho not I !) are capable of inverted flight by pitching the main blade the other way. I assume the model in this video is using this method to drive the heli down and pressing it against the slope when it has touched down. It's quite possible there's a pressure switch on the bottom of the skids that jacks the pitch the other way when it makes contact with a surface. Not a bad idea really, and this change happens in a VERY short period of time. You don't see any full scale helis capable of inverted flight, no doubt due to the mechanical difficulty in making the main rotor able to support the weight of the craft in the inverted position. The fact that the video does not show the heli taking back off again makes me seriously wonder if there isn't a contact switch at work.
(2) kinda dark in that video, I wonder what sort of surface they were landing on? Surely not velcro. Maybe a rubber mat? Probably a lot easier to do that, especially with a light craft, than on say a steep grassy slope or dirt hill. And what was on the bottom of the skids?
I'd be interested to see some statistics on the power-to-weight-ratio and such comparisons between a model heli and a passenger heli also.
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Probably fake (Score:1)
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