By Jennifer Hooker, IEN Staff
September 17, 2008—As technology and computers become more advanced, cool gadgets that we usually only found on television shows and sci-fi movies are turning into a reality. Stanford University computer scientists are moving the field of artificial intelligence (AI) forward with the development of an autonomous helicopter.
While it might not talk like KITT, from the ‘80s show “Knight Rider,” the four-foot long helicopter does teach itself to fly by “apprenticeship learning,” in which robots learn by watching an expert. The AI chopper observed a radio controlled helicopter operated by a person, perform stunts, flips, and rolls. According to the Stanford Report, the autonomous helicopter then ran through a series of tricks for five minutes on its own. (Check out this video of the chopper in action.)
The stunts are “by far the most difficult aerobatic maneuvers flown by any computer controlled helicopter,” said Andrew Ng, the Stanford professor directing the research.
According to Reuters, each self-flying helicopter costs about $4,000 and is equipped with accelerometers and gyroscopes. They also include a magnetometer to which uses the Earth’s magnetic field to determine the direction that the chopper is pointed. The helicopter is tracked by a GPS and communicates with a ground computer that makes the proper calculations beams data via radio to the chopper 20 times per second to make sure that it stays airborne.
Though the AI helicopters are still in their development stage, there is interest in using them to search for land mines in war zones and to scout wildfire hot spots in real-time.
(Photo and video courtesy of Stanford University)