Fully Autonomous Flapping-wing MAV Is As Light As 4 Sheets of A4 Paper

Hallie Siegel writes "According to its developers, the DelFly Explorer is the first flapping wing Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) that is able to fly with complete autonomy in unknown environments. Weighing just 20 grams and with a wingspan of 28cm, it is equipped with an onboard stereo vision system. The DelFly Explorer can perform an autonomous take-off, keep its height, and avoid obstacles for as long as its battery lasts (~9 minutes). All sensing and processing is performed on board, so no human or offboard computer is in the loop."

Re:Useless

[Camembert]

Clearly you have very little imagination. Read the article and marvel on how much functionality that they can pack into one gram. This kind of fundamental experimentation will eventually lead to intelligent small flying machines.

Re: Useless

[mark-t]

The ability to see, and transmit what it sees, is far from useless. I think that the poster to whom you responded nailed it with his first sentence.

Re:Wow

[hawguy]

So, it can turn on, fly at a certain height, and avoid things - all for 9 minutes. I mean, yeah that's sorta cool how they utilize the stereo vision, and that it's got the ability to slow one if it's "wings" in order to avoid things. But it looks like it's only going to work indoors, with all fans off. Being that there's no way to control it, seems like it'd be less than entertaining, other than to present to an unsuspecting audience, like slashdot. Other than that, troll me into oblivion, I suspect it's lame.

If you think that's lame, I heard that some idiot bike mechanic brothers demonstrated a so-called flying machine that could barely get 10 feet off the ground and couldn't even stay in the air for 60 seconds. What a joke! It's clear that it's doomed to fail since the early prototype was so limited.