Autonomous Aerial Robots

Doctor Vijay Kumar from the University of Pennsylvania has introduced a new concept of drones. Rather than having GPS to orientate drones’ movements, Doctor Kumar has made his drones aware of their own surroundings with no external support. It is possible to say that these aerial robots are the closest drone technology to a flying animal. In fact doctor Kumar was inspired by eagles and honeybees, in order to develop his robots’ flying skills.

Similarly to Google’s self-driving cars, doctor Kumar’s aerial robots use on board sensors, cameras, and lasers to scan the environment and detect obstacles. Subsequently it determines its location relative to the obstacles using a map of triangulation and assembling the environment’s features to a map. Therefore, these robots can act in almost any environment and provide a high-resolution map to one unfamiliar to the environment. It seems that this technology could greatly benefit situations, such as rescue missions.

As any technology, Kumar’s first prototypes had their cons. They were too big, too heavy, and expensive. Therefore, Kumar was challenged to change the robots design, and as a solution he figured he could use a smartphone to process the robots’ flying protocols. Why a smartphone though? It is a relatively cheap, slim, and user-friendly device, which is able to process high quantities of data. In addition, the smartphones even granted the robots with a high definition screen.

Once the robots became smaller, lighter, and faster, Kumar decided to “teach” them to act in very unstructured environments. Using the flying skills of animals, such as eagles and honeybees as references, Kumar managed to code these skills into his robots. In “The Future Flying Robots” TED lecture doctor Kumar shows two parallel videos of an eagle catching a fish on the ocean and his robots precisely catching a Philly cheese steak sandwich. Moreover, Kumar’s birds are able to carry some load and be conscious about its size and weight properties. Therefore, the robots can fly through highly difficult barriers without damaging the load.

As for the honeybee’s skills, Kumar realized that he could ease any collision by making the robots even smaller. Similarly to the bees, the robots would be able to bounce off barriers without any damage. In addition, the honeybees and probably most animals are stronger when they are grouped together. Therefore, Kumar figured that his robots could also to be aware of their fellow robots. He managed to introduce such principle in his technology by making multiple robots follow one leader robot regarding its position. Moreover, the robots can be asked to form multiple shapes in the air analogously to the group coordination embedded in natural swarms.

The ultimate goal of these flying robots, however, is far beyond making robots more “natural” or using them for rescue missions. In the TED lecture Kumar raises the world issue of the malnourished population. One billion out of seven billion of the world’s population is malnourished, while 80% of land is already being cultivated and population is constantly increasing. That is when the flying robots come in. They will be responsible for scanning trees along an orchard and sending information to the farmer about each individual tree’s needs regarding water, fertilizer and pesticide. This information is gathered through a standard colored camera, an infrared camera, and a thermal camera, which provide essential data, such as the number of fruits, canopy size, normalize difference vegetation index (NDVI), and chlorosis of each individual tree.

Therefore, the future of drone technology is much greater than it seems. Drones impact on society will go far beyond cool flying robots one can control for entertainment, or Amazon deliver “employees”. This technology certainly holds a promising future, and as doctor Kumar’s robotized agriculture project has showed us, these digital birds can even help diminish world wide hunger.