AST Digital Magazine July 2017 Digital-July | Page 33

Volume 14
July 2017 Edition
Smart Quadcopters Find their Way without
Humans or GPS
Milestone series of tests have quadcopters slaloming through
woodlands, swerving around obstacles in a hangar, and re-
porting back to their starting point all by themselves (Cour-
tesy of DARPA)
Phase 1 of DARPA’s Fast Lightweight Au-
tonomy (FLA) program concluded recently
following a series of obstacle-course flight
tests in central Florida.
Over four days, three teams of DARPA-support-
ed researchers huddled under shade tents in the
sweltering Florida sun, fine-tuning their sensor-
laden quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) during the intervals between increasingly
difficult runs.
DARPA’s FLA program is advancing technol-
ogy to enable small unmanned quadcopters to
fly autonomously through cluttered buildings and
obstacle-strewn environments at fast speeds (up
to 20 meters per second, or 45 mph) using on-
board cameras and sensors as “eyes” and smart
algorithms to self-navigate.
(Learn More, courtesy of DARPA and YouTube)
Potential applications for the technology in-
clude:
• Safely and quickly scanning for threats inside
a building before military teams enter
• Searching for a downed pilot in a heavily for-
ested area or jungle in hostile territory where
overhead imagery can’t see through the tree
canopy
• Locating survivors following earthquakes or
other disasters when entering a damaged
structure could be unsafe
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