(ORDO NEWS) — A team of researchers from the University of Zurich has developed a maneuverable quadcopter capable of avoiding numerous obstacles at speeds up to 70 kilometers per hour.
This drone is able to fly through the forest without crashing into trunks and branches, diving under fallen trees.
The drone can fly through the forest at high speed and dodge obstacles better than a real owl
Developed at the University of Zurich, the drone looks like a fairly simple quadcopter, about half a meter in size. But he can think and predict the future. Not all, of course, but exactly what he needs most – his own trajectory.
At the heart of his “mind” is a neural network that recognizes obstacles. She was trained separately on a simulator.
The simulator was running quite slowly. His task was to analyze the environment and learn how to lay a trajectory, that is, to predict the movement of the drone to the greatest possible depth.
In real time – in flight – the algorithm works very quickly. The drone flies through the forest at speeds up to 70 km/h.
He manages to get a picture from the sensors, analyze it, lay out a fan of possible trajectories and choose the optimal one.
The researchers installed on-board vision sensors on the drone, used the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 artificial intelligence module, which is able to perform complex tasks quite quickly, supporting the drone’s hardware and providing a smooth maneuverable flight, reports Techxplore .
The researchers tested their drone in a wide range of flights, from slow and steady flights to flying at full speed through numerous obstacles.
The drone is capable of maintaining maneuverability at speeds from 50 to 70 km/h. The drone can track the trajectory and constantly “observes” its position in the air.
The researchers suggest that the drone could be used for urgent real-world missions such as search and rescue operations and possibly delivering goods. The team has also made the software and hardware open source , allowing anyone to use their designs.
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