Even in tricky environments like forests, a new navigation system for drones reduces the processing power needed to avoid obstacles.
Chris Potter-Walker
A new navigation system allows a swarm of 10 lightweight drones to fly together without crashing into one another or obstacles.
It can be expensive and unwieldy to use a panoply of sensors to find a path for drones. Shrinking down a drone often involves getting rid of key components.
A group of people at a university in China have developed a method that reduces the size and hardware requirements of a drone while keeping its computing power.
The 300-gram drone uses off-the-shelf computer components powered by a 100 gram battery that can keep it aloft for up to 11 minutes. The processing unit of the drone has a camera that feeds real-time footage.
The forest has a swarm of drones flying through it.
They are Yuman Gao and Rui Jin.
A localisation algorithm creates a 3D image of the scene and sets the targets to reach within that scene. It looks out for obstacles and adjusts the flight pattern in real time. The most efficient route through the area is planned by it.
The largest share of the drone's processing power is accounted for by this algorithm. It can be used in a broader range of places where the signals from the gps device are low because it doesn't require them to locate itself.
The detail demonstrated is an excellent piece of engineering, says Jonathan Aitken at the University ofSheffield, UK.
Science Robotics is a journal.
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