Friday, July 23, 2010

Autonomous Glider That Can Land On The Wire


MIT always invent amazing things. Recently the research at MIT is not only providing more alert autonomous aircraft, but also show us that how much catching up we have to do to match the complexity and skill of the common bird.

In 2005 Rick Cory and Russ Tedrake started a project and made a mathematical model of the bird landing on a wire and emulated the move with an autonomous glider.A system is developed to control the glider, it allows the craft to keep an eye on itself and the position of the wire using external cameras, sending control data if adjustments have to be made. As it is, UAVs are generally limited to the same set of maneuvers that piloted aircraft have, but the researchers don't feel that this has to be the case. For their next trick they plan to take the show outside, as well as develop vehicles with flapping wings.

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