MIT News April 19, 2023 Autonomous robots can learn to perform visual navigation tasks from offline human demonstrations and generalize online and unseen scenarios within the same environment they have been trained on. It is challenging for these agents to take a step further and robustly generalize to new environments with drastic scenery changes that they have never encountered. Researchers at MIT have developed a method to create robust flight navigation agents that successfully perform vision-based fly-to-target tasks beyond their training environment under drastic distribution shifts. They designed an imitation learning framework using liquid neural networks, a brain-inspired class of […]
Tag Archives: drones
Hoverfly brains mapped to detect the sound of distant drones
Science Daily March 15, 2022 Insect vision systems have been mapped for some time now to improve camera-based detections. Researchers in Australia shown that it is possible pick up clear and crisp acoustic signatures of drones, including very small and quiet ones, using an algorithm based on the hoverfly’s visual system. They converted acoustic signals into spectrograms and used the neural pathway of the hoverfly brain to improve and suppress unrelated signals and noise, increasing the detection range for the sounds they wanted to detect. They looked for narrowband and/or broadband to pick up drone acoustics at short to medium […]
In first, ocean drone captures footage from inside hurricane
Phys.org October 1, 2021 US scientists on Thursday piloted a camera-equipped ocean drone called “Saildrone” that looks like a robotic surfboard into a Category 4 hurricane barreling across the Atlantic Ocean. Dramatic footage released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed the small craft battling 50-feet high waves and winds of over 120 mph inside Hurricane Sam. Powered by wind and 23 feet in length, it carries a specially designed “hurricane wing,” designed to withstand punishing conditions as it collects data to help scientists learn more about one of Earth’s most destructive forces. Saildrone’s website indicates it can record […]
Harnessing drones, geophysics and artificial intelligence to root out land mines
Phys.org September 20, 2021 Mines are challenging for clearance operations due to their wide area of impact upon deployment, small size, and random minefield orientation. In their previous work a team of researchers in the US (Columbia University, Binghamton University) focused on developing reliable unpiloted aerial systems (UAS) capable of detecting and identifying individual elements of PFM-1 minefields to rapidly assess wide areas for landmine contamination, minefield orientation, and possible minefield overlap. In their most recent proof-of-concept study they designed and deployed a machine learning workflow involving a region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN) to automate the detection and classification process. […]
Smellicopter: An obstacle-avoiding drone that uses a live moth antenna to seek out smells
Science Daily December 8, 2020 A team of researchers in the US (University of Washington, University Maryland) used antennae from the Manduca sexta hawkmoth for Smellicopter. One scent molecule in a moth antenna can trigger lots of cellular responses amplifying chemical signals. This process is super-efficient, specific, and fast. Researchers placed moths in the fridge to anesthetize them before removing an antenna. Once separated from the live moth, the antenna stays biologically and chemically active for up to four hours which can be extended by storing antennae in the fridge. In tests the moth antenna reacted more quickly and took […]
Russian Air Force Begins Testing MALE Strike Drones
Defense Systems November 2, 2019 The user testing follows the manufacturer test phase and state trials culminated with weapons tests with several drones deployed to Syria. Following those tests, the Ministry of Defense is expected to make the final procurement decision. In the strike-reconnaissance configuration, Orion-E can carry four missiles. The Russian Air Force plans to deploy MALE drones in a mixed formation of manned and unmanned reconnaissance and attack platforms. These are expected to use MALE drones such as long loitering but slow Orion, and fast, long-range strike aircraft such as the S-34…read more.
Drones will fly for days with new photovoltaic engine
Tech Xplore July 26, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (Laurence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCBerkeley, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Swarthmore College, University of Colorado, Caltech) used the rear mirror to create thermophotovoltaic systems with unprecedented high thermophotovoltaic efficiency. This mirror reflects low-energy infrared photons back into the heat source, recovering their energy. Therefore, the rear mirror serves a dual function; boosting the voltage and reusing infrared thermal photons. This allows the possibility of a practical >50% efficient thermophotovoltaic system…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Drone transmits uncompressed 4K video in real time using millimeter wave tech
Phys.org July 1, 2019 Millimeter wave wireless communication is expected to be used in 5G because of the high-speed communication, but the problem is that communication distance is limited due to large attenuation of radio waves. An international team of researchers (Japan, USA – industry) has developed a video transmission system with a millimeter wave wireless communication device that uses a small, lightweight lens antenna that can be mounted on a drone. In tests, the team was able to use a drone to take video in 4K and transmit the video in real time from over 100 m in the […]
Autonomous drones can help search and rescue after disasters
Phys.org March 5, 2019 Researchers at the University of Dayton has developed an artificial neural network system that can run in a computer onboard a drone. First the system processes the images to improve their clarity. The system can identify people in various positions from different viewing angles and in varying lighting conditions, compute three-dimensional models of people, detect an object without seeing the whole object. The system has a strategy to focus the search area to the most significant regions in the scene to obtain information about the shape, structure and texture of objects and flags it the location […]
Russian scientists created ‘flying’ gas chromatograph
Eurekalert June 18, 2018 The portable gas microchromatograph developed by researchers in Russia weighs a little more than a kilogram and it completely replaces bulky laboratory devices. It can provide accurate data on the composition of the atmosphere, qualitative and quantitative composition of oil and gas, as well as analyse biomarkers in exhaled human air within a few minutes. It can perform an operational analysis of the state of the atmosphere at altitudes of up to 1000 meters and within a radius of 2 km from the source, record and track the level of concentration of substances in the air […]