The video is too stylized for me. I would love for a more steady camera showcasing the drone avoiding obstacles as it flies around. The jump-cuts and music detract from the cool tech I want to learn about.
To do that reliably, I think both vehicles would need to know their absolute positions with high resolution (spatial and time). Could be a separate research project given how small their planes are.
Many of the fragments in the video would be a lot more interesting if they lasted longer than a second. This is edited to seem exciting, not to show what the actual capabilities and limitations are.
Is... is the video intended to be a parody of something? It's like they took two shots of a drone turning slightly to avoid a tree in the middle of a field, and decided to hit it with a nuclear bomb of "MAKE IT FEEL MORE EPIC" in editing.
Nice link. Makes you wonder what biomimicry might bring to drones in a couple of generations. Maybe in addition to a set of propeller motors, you could have a couple of servos running small deployable "fan-like fins" (or is that fin-like fans?) for fast maneuvering where just changing prop speed won't quite cut it.
Fancy camera work, but the obstacle avoidance is not convincing. The drone basically passes by one tree, and that's mostly it. Compare that to any bird that lives its life in the brush. Human built flying machines are fast and can carry huge loads but compared to animals we still lag far behind in control and finesse.
This is a very disappointing movie, it shows the drone dodging the same tree (or just branch actually) over an over again, there is no indication of its speed, it dodges only one obstacle every time before a cut/edit is done. Is there a reason this was not tried in a forest (as the title would suggest)?
The way the trees glow white in the plane view at 1:09 -- could they be using near infrared cameras or filters to help specifically with tree detection? Nowhere in the color video do the leaves look that bright. The paper doesn't seem to mention it though.
It definitely looks like infrared to me. The paper mentions that they use a pair of Point Grey Firefly MV cameras, and the reference manual for those cameras[1] says that "in monochrome models, the IR filter is replaced with a transparent piece of glass."
Now I've got no idea where the $1,700 comes from - I was assuming it was ~$100 worth of typical rc flying wing, with $1500+ worth of cameras and computers on board...
I wish I could be more excited about this but the most probable use for this technology is making it easier for drones to spy on people or for cruise missiles to be able to better fly into someone's window. :-(
This does go a long way to explaining speeder bikes -- the human rider controls the gross movement, but the bike itself does obstacle avoidance. Otherwise, there's no way a regular stormtrooper could fly those through the thick forests of Endor.
In video games, there are a lot of clever tricks they use to make the player more likely to hit enemies. E.g. the cursor slows down when you get close to an enemy, and bullets bend towards them. See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL1_ht1EdAU
I wonder if tricks like these would work on real life vehicles.
It's not a useful distinction since many kinds of games use player UX "cheats" like slight warping to physics algorithms, RNG weighting, etc. Most of these features act to take emphasis off of precise, low-level execution, or the pain of a string of unlucky results, in favor of higher-level strategy concerns, fast decision making, and expected values over time. There is an occasional chorus of "simulation purism" from some folks, but really, simulation elements are bulldozed in games constantly and consciously. The actual results are subtle and people don't take much notice when rules are bent, they just experience "fluid control" or "fair outcomes."
Auto-aim is only well-known because it's visually obvious when it occurs - the gun did not point in the direction of the camera.
I think this algorithm would be great for "oh shit a tree" scenarios, but awful for regular flying, since it basically seems to have two modes, blithe disinterest up to a given depth, and panicked evasion thereafter. It would make for a bumpy ride.
Maybe you don't get to pilot a speeder bike unless you're somewhat Force-sensitive. I'm sure there's a continuum of Force-sensitivity between ysalamiri and Jedi Masters, with some humans just having great reflexes.
Nice idea.
This is the advantage of having a huge fanbase. You can count on the fans to plug all the plot holes and patch up whatever poor writing the studio throws out.
