TED TALK: Autonomous Agile Aerial Robots

Autonomous Agile Aerial Robots

In this TedTalk, Vijay Kumar introduces autonomous agile aerial robots. These robots are related to unmanned air vehicles; also known as UAV’s. But unlike UAV’s, autonomous agile aerial robots are much smaller in comparison weighing less than 1 pound. Also, unlike UAV’s, these small robots are very agile and are able to perform very acrobatic maneuvers. In the discussion, Vijay shows the physics of how these robots are able to perform these agile maneuvers by changing rotor speeds, pitch and yaw. The robots are able to have this type of ability due to their fast processors which receive environmental input 100 times per-second and adjust controls 600 times a second. This gives these robots the ability to be aware with neighboring robots to perform group tasks like flying in formation.

Vijay Kumar's Perspective 

Autonomous micro aerial robots can operate in three-dimensional environments, and offer many opportunities for the field robotics community. I will describe the challenges in developing small, agile robots and our recent work in addressing these challenges. I will also discuss the problems in deploying large numbers of aerial robots with applications to cooperative manipulation and transport, construction, and exploration and mapping in indoor environments.

Future of UAV's

Future applications of UAV systems will depend on the aircraft autonomous behavior and decision capabilities. Search and Rescue is one complex possible mission and is here taken as a case study. The ReSSAC project is a multidisciplinary project at ONERA. Its main challenges are related to the architectures and algorithms for autonomous decision and information processing onboard UAVs that perform their mission in cooperation with operators. The feasibility demonstrations and results of the project are intended to be reused and extended in further studies, projects and collaborations. A first step of the project was to develop an autonomous control architecture for our two rotorcraft. In this paper, we present the current status and preliminary achievements of the ReSSAC project, especially some records of past experimental flights with our autonomous aircraft. We further discuss ongoing studies and research perspectives.

TED TALKS Video

Vijay Kumar talks about different functionalities of this UAV in this video