Smart Flying Robots 79
Chernyakov writes "MARVIN, a fully autonomous RC helicopter built by the Technische Universitaet Berlin, won the
2000 International Aerial Robotics Competition.
MARVIN has a radio-linked ground station consisting of several networked Linux machines (which provide the computing power for vision, mapping and flight-course generation).
The robots' mission is to fly into a disaster area complete with fire, water and smoke hazards, to locate and avoid threats to itself, to find bodies, distinguish from survivors and the dead, identify hazardous materials containers, determine if the container contents are radioactive, biohazardous, or explosive (by reading the labels), generate a detailed map of the disaster area, photograph the area, and return safely back to base.
MARVIN pulled it off completely autonomously, with no human help or intervention. High quality (90 MB) and Low quality (12 MB) MPEGs of the robot are available."
MARVIN, eh? (Score:3)
***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***
This Is Where We Should Be Going (Score:2)
Heres a thought...how many of these sorts of "disasters" are created by humans? If more robotics are used in daily life, could human error be downplayed, therefore reducing the situations in which humans might be put into danger? Prevention is the best cure, they say...
Uh-huh (Score:3)
I don't know how they're coding it, but they're probably going to hype it as "Artificial Intelligence"!!!!!
What if the person is unconcious? Is that a dead person or an alive person? What if they're alive, but not breathing? Could it even tell if they were breathing? Could I fool the machine into thinking I was dead?
The problem with these types of things is that they fall into two categories - machines that are so totally wrong in what and how they judge things that they aren't even worth looking at, and machines that are right some of the time, and so horrendously wrong when it counts that they aren't worth looking at.
Well that's my cynical $0.02 anyway.
MARVIN.... (Score:1)
Killer Robot (Score:1)
MARVIN? (Score:1)
Hmmm (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Disaster Area (Score:2)
Neat, who would have thought my OS would help me survive one of Hotblacks shows??
Menial robot (Score:1)
Re:Uh-huh (Score:1)
Sounds like the censorware from the last article.
Excellent. (Score:1)
This is just the kind of thing I like to see. Thank you, slashdot, for having some interesting and current news. Even if it is rare.
I've actually been considering building a radio controlled vehicle for firefighters to use to survey a burning building before entering it. I figure each one would cost a grand or so and would probably be electric, just because then it wouldn't depend on oxygen for combustion. Not to mention, the two-stroke model car engines are loud and touchy. I haven't used any of the four-strokes yet.
Does anyone know if there are any autonomous systems which operate on the ground which are used for search and rescue?
Marvin the Manic-Depressive Autonomous Helicopter (Score:4)
Re:Uh-huh (Score:3)
And if it can take pictures all around the place, that's real cool.
I am living in Enschede, a city in the Netherlands where a fireworks bunker exploded half a year ago. This robot could have been usefull to fly over the (possible very dangerous) site to take pictures and determine the situation, without the risks of loosing even more peoples lifes.
And it can be real handy for the police afterwards, to determine how things actually happened (like 'hey, that container full of fireworks wasn't supposed to be standing there!')
Hmmm.... (Score:1)
some sample code from the flying robot (Score:2)
include kill.o
open missle compartment
missles = 20
fire missiles
/* if people dead 200 then goto 20
goto 10
20
missionaccomplished()
load destroyworld.h
destroyworld = 1
end()
I'd rather use an aerobot... (Score:3)
--
Re:Excellent. (Score:1)
I give it 2 years... (Score:1)
sorry comment got screwed up (Score:1)
Re:Marvin the Manic-Depressive Autonomous Helicopt (Score:1)
'Can I have a beowulf cluster of those?'
Yeah, and when it is standing idle it could calculate the purpose of life or even better, SETI@home or distributed.net blocks
[Browse at -1 to read this post. At least, that is where I think it should be]
Marvin makes me think of bugs bunny (Score:1)
Re:MARVIN, eh? (Score:3)
"It's a wonderful way of being wretched."
Robots used to take care of us.. (Score:1)
Please mirror (Score:1)
-glenn
P.S. Linking from Slashdot to 90 meg video files in Germany is not the best idea.
Slashdotted,,, (Score:1)
Re:Marvin makes me think of bugs bunny (Score:1)
Shouldn't that be "Eludum Q-38 Space Modulator"?
You make me so very, very angry! (Another Marvin Quote.
"Where's the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering 'Kaboom'!"
hahaha (Score:1)
Re:Uh-huh (Score:2)
If the robot can make deterministic judgements following rules as to a persons health status, that is AI. No hype about it.
I can also see where the system could purposely use logic to fail on the side of a human being alive when they are not instead of the other way arround.
I imagine that determining the persons health status being one of the simpler of the tasks that the robot has to do. Finding people and avoiding problems is hard for us people, let alone for a robot.
Give the people more credit.
I see four categories for these machines, not two...
Those that outperform expectations
those that meet expectations
those that don't meet expectations
and those that fit into your classifications.
Re:I give it 2 years... (Score:1)
How do you think they would score that?
Fires put out
Aerial surveys taken
Women and Children Rescued?
Labels Read for hazardous materials
Re:This Is Where We Should Be Going (Score:1)
giant multimedia files (Score:2)
better than... (Score:1)
Re:hahaha (Score:1)
Re:hahaha (Score:1)
Some more info & a description of the video (Score:4)
The helicopter itself looks like a standard
Anyone who has ever flown an RC helicopter knows how difficult it is for a human, much less a computer. The software usually involves use of a Kalmon Filter to fuse the sensors, and neural networks to build fuzzy control rules for the flight surfaces (aileron, rudder, collective, etc) in real-time.
The video, boring for some, shows the helicopter taking off and flying over the disaster area. The heli adjusts its location constantly for better views of targets then flies away and lands. There are good shots of the ground station showing Mission Control, robot-vision, and flight-path mapping. Also some good shots of not-so-successful flights and what can go wrong.
This is the tenth year of the IAR Competition; each year the mission gets more complicated. In 1991, autonomous flying vehicles (no hovercraft) simply needed to pick up a disc at one end of the field and drop it off at a deposit-point on the other end. No one completed the mission that year.
As a side point, let me just say that technology can always be used for evil, but development of robots such as these are most useful in what the industry terms D^3 (D-cubed) environments: Dull, Dirty, and Dangerous.
Dull: Flying over thousands of acres of forest painstakingly examining almost each tree for insect damage.
Dirty: A disaster area with potential exposure to lethal gases and the like.
Dangerous: Photographing a volcano for threat analysis.
I have a copy of the 90 MB mpeg -- I'll try to mirror it on Mojo Nation, but my one-way cable modem might not like it.
Re:I'd rather use an aerobot... (Score:1)
Re:Uh-huh (Score:2)
What the heck is your point? That this thing is useless because it doesn't save us the tedious effort of figuring out for ourselves if someone is dead?
The idea is that it can do an autonomous first-pass assesment of a scene, without putting any more humans into immediate danger. A human can then use the information to make more intelligent decisions on what to do next to minimize the loss of life.
Give your head a shake; they're not trying to automate the entire rescue process.
Re:Robots used to take care of us.. (Score:2)
----
Disaster areas (Score:2)
____________________________
"File swapping on the internet is putting at risk nothing less than human progress and prosperity"
--Microsoft quote
Re:Uh-huh (Score:1)
Why would you want to do that? You should be happy that someone wants to rescue you ;) .
Remember Sikorski. (Score:3)
Helicopter pioneer Igor Sikorsky
However, the helicopter did come to be
used for other purposes.
Party pooping away,
--Apuleius
We need a mirror! (Score:1)
Re:Ultra-fast mirror (Score:1)
http://a516.g.akamai.net/7/516/1/f15ee829e2faf2
Re:We need a mirror! (Score:1)
Re:Killer Robot (Score:1)
"...Weapons: 2 concussion missile launchers. Heavily armored for explosives deployment deep within the mines. Threat Level: High"
12 meg mirror (Score:1)
http://a516.g.akamai.net/7/516/1/f15ee829e2faf2
Be sure to remove the slashdot added spacing between the dot and mpg
Nice attack bot (Score:1)
Are you sure the heli^H^Hadchopper wasn't financed by military?
I'm sure this will get somebodies backing... (Score:2)
Like a battlefield?
"to locate and avoid threats to itself, to find bodies, distinguish from survivors and the dead,"
So it can save ammunition?
"identify hazardous materials containers, determine if the container contents are radioactive, biohazardous, or explosive (by reading the labels),"
So it can identify vehicles which look like large metal containers, and to IFF by reading their markings?
"generate a detailed map of the disaster area, photograph the area, and return safely back to base."
Somebody wants this, and it isn't the Boy Scouts.
Re:Uh-huh (Score:2)
Re:Slashdotted,,, (Score:1)
Re:Uh-huh (Score:2)
No, it did them. Which idiot moderated the above post `insightful'? He didn't even read the slashdot banner, let alone the story.
But can it accuratly count election ballots? (Score:1)
Re:Uh-huh (Score:2)
Well, think to yourself how you would determine if someone is still alive. Let's see: heartbeat, and body temperature are both great indicators. Are you trying to say a robot could not determine either of those?
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Open Source? (Score:1)
Potential uses? (Score:1)
Wouldn't that make a great movie?
---
Re:We need a mirror! (Score:1)
um not to be picky or anything but your response had nothing to do with the original post.
Why does it matter where the computing happens? M-w.com defines robot as:
Seems to meet both 2 and 3. Regardlessly the point of the contest is to prove new technology. In five years all the tech they used will be at least half the size and weight and you'll be able to mount it anywhere.Re:Hmmm.... (Score:1)
Re:Killer Robot (Score:1)
Speaking about potentially lethal technology another not-talked-a-lot-about threat are electromagnetic pulse weapons. They are suspected to have been used already in Russia in bank robberies. I once saw a Primetime Live special about a guy who builds these from regular components expressly for the purpose to see how easy it is to build! He tests them near Groom lake/Area 51 and contracts for the Military. Diane Sawyer watched him aim one of the devices he built at a running car and shoot it - the engine died immediately.
Re:giant multimedia files (Score:1)
Re:Killer Robot (Score:2)
Oooooo. Scary!
I think they even had the hood up.
Later,
Erik Z
R/C helicopter collisions... (Score:2)
Re:Excellent. (Score:1)
Tragic fire! 3 deaths, 2 seriously injured
A new state of the art ariel search and rescue robot was inspecting a burning building when its mission when terribly wrong. Eye witnesses say the flying machine broke open a 4th storey window and the fire which was raging on that floor received a ton of oxygen for fuel & launched the spinning bladed death machine into the rubber necking crowd. No one was injured in the fire but 3 people are dead and 2 from the spinning metal. Sources Linux and Slashdot are to blame.
News at 11.
--Clay
Re:We need a mirror! (Score:1)
(that's to say, it's silly.)
Re:Killer Robot (Score:1)
Sorry, but... (Score:2)
With apologies to Mel Blanc.
Re:I'm sure this will get somebodies backing... (Score:1)
-^_^-
Autonomous Robot Life/Death Drones (Score:2)
Some people have suggested other flight platforms, particularly from Moller [moller.com], but while the Aerobot looks nice it is somewhat expensive, and the Skycar looks unsuited to perform an tasks for which the system was intended. What is really important, though is the control electronics, vision system, etc.
The German system seems to do a nice job with this (note also that Germans, at Mercedes-Benz, are the farthest along - at least in public - on autonomous robot land vehicles). What would be an interesting next challenge would be to try to scale-up from small helicopters to, say, a full-blown bell with stretcher pods and have the system be able to perform rescues of humans whom can be determined to still be mobile enough to get themselves onto the craft.
Regarding detecting the difference between dead humans, unconscious humans, and alive but not breathing humans - first of all, those are distinctions that are hard for humans to make from a helicopter, so it's an awkward comparison. Furthermore, using infrared technology, the system would be better at detecting humans who died long enough ago that they were starting to get cold from others - something a human can not do while airborne.
If you want to distinguish the unconscious, dead, and almost-dead you need to send in a land-based robot with some medical technology for making the distinction (but how do you TEST that system?)
Right now, I think humans will be used for this.
Also interesting would be to test the system for ability to deliver payloads (yeah, it could be bombs, but it would be interesting to test its accuracy in dropping medical supplies to those in a disaster area who are still mobile enough to use them...)
Re:This Is Where We Should Be Going (Score:2)
When the robots get smart enough, they'll go: "Why the hell are we protecting THESE wimps?".
Re:We need a mirror! (Score:1)
The reason they allow a ground-station to be used for processing is because they consider it to be much more of an economic hurdle than a technical one. The idea being, if you can build an "affordable" ground station that does real-time processing for the robot, with a little more $$ you can put the processing on-board -- it's not a technology issue.
Bear in mind that with MARVIN there was an huge amount of computing power on-board the helicopter. It would be silly do the critical processing (i.e., flight dynamics) anywhere but on-board. Put it this way -- if the robot lost the radio link to the groundstation it wouldn't crash, it would simply stop receiving way-point data and go into fail-safe mode. If it didn't recover radio contact it would abort the mission and return to base.
Re:The real story (Score:1)
This is the first year that the HAMMER facility was used as the disaster area and none of the teams had any prior knowledge of the location of anything on the field.
Re:Some more info & a description of the video (Score:1)
I was at Georgia Tech back around 1990 and knew someone who worked on their helicopter. At the time they were still trying to solve the flight stability problems. I believe they were working on a gyro system that could hold the machine in a level hover. That was the big challenge then. Of course, that was when I had EE profs tell me that they doubted CPUs could run much over 40 MHz because of all the cross-talk and RF interference.
I saw this contest about 2 or 3 years ago on some tv show. Some high school kids almost made it. If I remember correctly, they had a blimp and they managed to pick up a disk but couldn't get the mechanism to drop it. (Actually, I think the high school kids didn't have to be autonomous).
Sigh. If only there were money in robotics.
Re:MARVIN, eh? (Score:2)
Warehouse, Dummy (Score:2)
Re:MARVIN, eh? (Score:2)
Re:Some more info & a description of the video (Score:1)
There will be. Just wait a couple more years.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Killer Robot (Score:1)
> Heavily armored for explosives deployment deep
> within the mines. Threat Level: High"
Am i the only one who got the descent reference? Jeez, it hasn't been out for that many years!
---GEEK CODE---
Ver: 3.12
GCS/S d- s++: a-- C++++ UBCL+++ P+ L++
W+++ PS+ Y+ R+ b+++ h+(++) r++ y+
Co-operation (Score:1)
Now all they've got to do is to get a group of marvins to flock, communicate and co-operate in there environments. Now that I'd like to see
~matt~
0
o
><>
Re:Excellent. (Score:1)
It is. But have you ever tried to tune one of those little sub-1-cubic inch two strokes? It's not easy. They also run on nitromethane, which is highly volatile, which is probably not what you want to introduce into a burning building.