MIT Drone Finds Its Way Using Kinect Vision 77
garymortimer writes "This MIT multicopter is able to fly in GPS denied environments by creating a 3D map of its surroundings on the fly (no pun intended) based on point clouds generated by a Kinect. Also pretty handy for avoiding trees and other obstacles outside at low level. This processing is onboard, unlike other systems that depend on motion capture rigs."
(Partially) misleading summary. (Score:4, Informative)
According to TFV the "multicopter" uses onboard processing to find reference points between successive video frames, which it then uses to determine how fast and how far the drone moves.
However, the actual map generation and navigation is handled by a separate computer.