AirBurr UAV navigates by crashing into things
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A rendering of a future version of the crash-proof AirBurr, navigating a disaster site
A rendering depicting what a future version of the AirBurr may look like
The current AirBurr V11
A time-lapse exposure of an AirBurr flight in a pitch-black room – the yellow lines indicate where the UAV was taking off or flying, while the red lines indicate collisions or uprighting
Article Summary
If you’ve ever watched a fly trying to find its way around a house, you might have noticed that it didn’t take a particularly graceful approach – it probably bounced off a lot of windows and walls, until by process of elimination, it found a route that was clear. Well, researchers at Switzerland’s EPFL Laboratory of Intelligent Systems are taking that same approach with the latest version of their autonomous AirBurr UAV – it’s built to run into things, in order to map and navigate its environment.
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