MEXICO: An MIT student says he’s helped solve – or at least begun to solve – the reckless drone problem.
Adam Barry, a doctoral candidate at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, has successfully programmed a drone to sense and avoid objects much more efficiently, the UPI reported.
The new self-flying drone can dodge obstacles at 30 miles per hour.
Currently, UAVs are pretty stupid. They’re constantly crashing into stationary objects – trees, buildings and people. Technology already exists to help larger vehicles avoid collisions.
Lidar, for example, keeps self-driving cars from running into things. But lidar sensors are too heavy to be deployed on a small drone.
Barry solved this problem by designing his own set of algorithms to guide the flight and reaction abilities of a self-flying drone. By simplifying object-sensing models, Barry fit smaller algorithms into a smaller computer.
His drone confines its sensing prowess to a limited range, looking for objects within 33 feet – not hundreds or thousands of feet.
As it flies head, it refocuses on the limited amount of space. It doesn’t have a map of the area, it makes one up on the go, and then throws it away as soon as the map is irrelevant.
