Nano quadroters in autonomous action
The University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab has been working with quadrotors from some time, demonstrating how the flying robots can be used for everything from assembling structures to flying through moving hula hoops. Back in January, they put out a video demonstrating the capabilities of their minaturized ‘nano quadrotors’ flying in formation.
Vijay Kumar of U Penn gave a talk at TED 2012, and the video above goes into greater detail about the hows and whys of quadrotor development and application. The second half of the video shows even more complex applications, including a Kinect-ed quadrotor navigating and compiling a 3D map of building it has entered for the first time.
“[Agile aerial] robots like this have many applications. You can send them inside buildings as first responders to look for intruders, maybe look for biochemical leaks … [or they] can be used for transporting cargo.”
I won’t spoil the grand finale. It’s definitely worth watching. Below is the video from January, which is available in HD.
Tags: Kinect, KMel Robotics, nano quadrotor, quadrotor, TED, TED 2012, University of Pennsylvania, Vijay Kumar
