Posted by Chris Anderson on November 25, 2009 at 12:06pm
Carnegie Mellon's SensorFly inlcudes a full IMU and an ultrasonic sensor in just 29 grams. Designed for interior autonomy and swarming. Impressive!
"The SensorFly is a novel low-cost controlled-mobile aerial sensor networking platform. A flock of these 29g autonomous helicopter nodes with communication, ranging and collaborative path determination capabilities, can be extremely useful in sensing survivors after disasters or adversaries in urban combat scenarios."
(From Makezine)
I don't get it. The fuse is just spinning. They can't have any direction control. As near as I can tell, they phrased things right to make it seem like it controls itself ("knows where it's going" AKA data logging, not direction control). They need to put a tail on it so the fuse doesn't spin.....
It's good to see r/c aircraft with the ability to make a kid laugh and on the other hand be used to save lives by doing recon missions as well, interesting....
I talked to these guys at Sensys2009, great work. They used off the shelf hardware in the form of the micro mesquito contra rotating blades and motors. The produced their own circuit boards that formed the fuselage. Nice low cost platforms and they bounced off of any obstacles they didn't avoid. I shot video of them but haven't had the time to edit, I will post the pics soon.
Comments
no seriously, this is a great job.