Autonomous Flight with a Kinect

This video demonstrates an MAV outfitted with a Kinect sensor flying indoors autonomously. This technology was developed at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and University of Washington's Robotics and States Estimation Laboratory.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/rrg/index.php?n=Main.VisualOdometryForGPS-DeniedF...

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• MAV
• MIT
• CSAIL
• technology
• software
• Kinect
• helicopter

[imahackeryamofo]

For the love of all that is holy... Will someone outfit one of these to deliver pizzas?

[silentplummet]

Manhacks.

[Emeengor]

@imahackeryamofo (╯°□°）╯

[abram730]

@roidroid I suggested because of price, performance per watt and having CUDA. With 9 out of 10 chips being ARM, it has the number and $ behind it.

That also makes an open ARM platform important. Hamstrung desktops could be a big blow.

By baggage, I mean many features added to x86 do more harm then good in the long run to the core as things become power limited. Power was never an issue as x86 evolved.. but now it is.

[abram730]

@roidroid Yes, general purpose is becoming a special purpose computer.  The special purpose Development Board is the general purpose. Very backwards.

watch?v=PnRQFkiKSf4

There's project Denver, a ARM chip for desktop, server, and HPC. blocks of 32-64 CUDA per 64bit ARM core, so 256-512 total. The latter could run kinectfusion real time.

Lets hope they ARE PC's.

Autonomous drones work best with 2 tiers of processing(on / off board) and a common code base would be nice.

[roidroid]

@abram730 especially when it comes to spacial calculations, such as working with kinect data. Kinectfusion runs on CUDA and works the GPU really hard.

i just wish there were more general purpose computers running these chips, instead of all these hamstrung "appliance-devices" like phones and tablets.

watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

[abram730]

@roidroid x86 has a lot of baggage. Tegra 4 will have 8 ARM CPU cores and 64 CUDA cores.

Heck a Tegra 3 can beat a Core 2 Duo T7200 and they only use 1-2 watts.

Cell phone chips are where it's at.

[ladangelo202]

@imahackeryamofo pizza is to heavy and it would need a larger power source meaning it would need an alternate source of propulsion... so a small scale fuel powered helicopter or more preferably a quadrocopter could in theory deliver pizza to your house.. but the local police wouldn't like it and i have no idea how cost effective it is especially after having to purchase a very very sizable insurance policy if you could even get one ... students cost less money

[ladangelo202]

Awesome! 

[MLGHaloKid]

Possible evil killer robots HERE WE COME!!!

[palmshoot]

@johnaiton To expand on what schmidtbag said, lidar can be used to achieve what you're talking about. For more info do ab web search for "C3" and "lidar." (C3 is an innovator in this area.)