Nah, just clumsy--and that's an asset!
By Kelsey D. Atherton Posted 03.05.2013 at 10:00 am 4 Comments

Airburr UAV Night Flight
Airburr UAV Night Flight Adrien Briod

This little drone only seems dumb. While its nimble brethren navigate corridors and zip in and out of windows, the Swiss-designed AirBurr crashes into just about everything, like an old rummy at last call.

There's a reason for all that clumsiness: Crashing into walls helps the AirBurr map unknown surroundings. Each time it smacks into something, the drone rights itself with four retractable carbon fiber legs, then remembers what it ran into. Gizmag explains how:

By analyzing the position and force of its collisions, the AirBurr is able to gradually map out its surroundings, establishing where the various boundaries lie--it’s not unlike the random direction algorithm-based systems used by robotic vacuum cleaners, to learn the layout of the floor around them.

The AirBurr could be used to map building interiors that are not safe for people, such as collapsed buildings after an earthquake or hostile buildings during a raid.

Watch the AirBurr bounce into things here:

4 Comments

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kflotlin
03/05/13 at 3:35 pm

Interesting I guess but what advantages does this have over cameras?

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55rebel
03/05/13 at 9:25 pm

...or lasers?

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arathorn867
03/06/13 at 2:24 am

Here is brilliance. We need a device for entering UNSTABLE environments. Options; thermal imaging, lasers, radar, infrared, sonar, blind crow. Blind crow sounds interesting, how does it work? We make a drone that goes around "CRASHING INTO WALLS" to make a map of an UNSTABLE environment. Perfect! let's do it! Seriously? this is the stupidest idea I have heard in a while.

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Jellybelly
03/06/13 at 1:39 pm

Sounds stupid but time will tell.

You would think that lasers would be the proper way since they can measure distance as well as map their surroundings and are much quicker at doing it than a dumb drone.



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