Flying Car News, May 26
MIT drones learn from VR, the RoboFly debuts, Elios drones go down into the mines, and more!
This week’s top Flying Car News: MIT drones learn from virtual reality, a tiny autonomous drone, a laser powered robofly, and more!
Flying cars will be a significant part of the future of transportation. Recent advancements in drone technology, electric VTOL aircraft, and autonomous systems have paved the way for an aerial transportation revolution. We created the Udacity Flying Car News Series, to ensure you stay up-to-date on all the latest Flying Car and Autonomous Aircraft stories!
MIT drones learn from Virtual Reality
Researchers at MIT have created a virtual reality testing ground for real-world drones flying in empty spaces, with the goal of improving autonomous drone technology, while simultaneously minimizing crashes.
“The drone will be flying in an empty room, but will be ‘hallucinating’ a completely different environment, and will learn in that environment,” Karaman explains.
Tiny autonomous drone
Researchers at ETH Zurich detailed how they implemented complete flight autonomy on the Crazyflie 2.0 Nano Quadcopter in this research paper. The Crazyflie drone is what we recommended for use in the Flying Car Nanodegree program!
“This means nano-drones are completely autonomous. This is the first time such a small quadrotor can be controlled this way, without any need of external sensing and computing.”
Laser-powered Robofly
Researchers at the University of Washington have created a tiny nanodrone called Robofly which is powered externally by lasers.
“To make the wings flap forward swiftly, it sends a series of pulses in rapid succession and then slows the pulsing down as you get near the top of the wave. And then it does this in reverse to make the wings flap smoothly in the other direction,” explained lead author Johannes James.
Drones in underground mines
Drone company Flyability’s collision-tolerant Elios drone is being used to replace humans for inspections in dangerous underground mines.
“It’s a unique solution to the problem of flying in tight spaces: the drone in it’s cage can roll off of the sides of an obstacle while maintaining good video and data. It makes an impossible task — inspecting the inside of a tank, a steel girder, or just a tight space with a drone — possible.”
If you are interested in joining the pioneering generation of engineers who will build the smart transportation systems of the future, discover Udacity’s Flying Car Nanodegree Program today!
And stay tuned for more Flying Car News!
