Flying robots (aka unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) to check power lines or deliver emergency aid have become an important and controversial part of military capacity in recent years. They are also used in agriculture, for filming and numerous other applications that require cheap and extensive aerial surveillance. But so far all these drones have had human pilots; the difference is that their pilots are on the ground and fly the aircraft remotely.
The next step with drone technology is to develop machines that fly themselves, opening them up to a wider range of applications. For this to happen, drones must be able to sense and respond to their local environments, altering their height and flying trajectories in order to avoid colliding with other objects in their paths. In nature birds, fish and insects can all congregate in swarms, each animal responding to its neighbor almost instantaneously to allow the swarm to fly or swim as a single unit. Drones can emulate this.
With reliable autonomy and collision avoidance, drones can begin to take on tasks too dangerous or remote for humans to carry out: checking electric power lines, for example, or delivering medical supplies in an emergency. Drone delivery machines will be able to find the best route to their destination and take into account other flying vehicles and obstacles. In agriculture autonomous drones can collect and process vast amounts of visual data from the air, allowing precise and efficient use of inputs such as fertilizer and irrigation.
In January 2014 Intel and Ascending Technologies showcased prototype multicopter drones that could navigate an on-stage obstacle course and automatically avoid people who walked into their paths. The machines use Intel's RealSense camera module, which weighs just eight grams and is less than four millimeters thick. This level of collision avoidance will usher in a future of shared airspace, with many drones flying in proximity to humans and operating in and near the built environment to perform a multitude of tasks. Drones are essentially robots operating in three, rather than two, dimensions; advances in next-generation robotics technology will accelerate this trend.
Flying vehicles will never be risk-free, whether operated by humans or as intelligent machines. For widespread adoption, sense-and-avoid drones must be able to operate reliably in the most difficult conditions: at night, in blizzards or dust storms. Unlike our current digital mobile devices (which are actually immobile because we have to carry them around), drones will be transformational as they are self-mobile and have the capacity of flying in the three-dimensional world that is beyond our direct human reach. Once ubiquitous, they will vastly expand our presence, productivity and human experience.
Source: Scientific American
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