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Soon, unmanned drone that dodges obstacles on its own

An unmanned drone that can avoid obstacles without human control has been developed by scientists including one of Indian origin.

London: An unmanned drone that can avoid obstacles without human control has been developed by scientists including one of Indian origin.
Until now, the flying robots always needed a human at the controls to operate them remotely and prevent them from crashing. However, researchers at New York’s Cornell University have managed to develop software that will help drones to dodge obstacles, the Telegraph reported. In the experiments funded by US Defence agency DARPA and drone-producer Lockheed Martin, a miniature helicopter equipped with a camera captures photographs as it flies. Software developed by assistant professor of computer science Ashutosh Saxena and his team, turns the image in the drone’s camera into a 3D model of its environment, and the robotic brain then uses an algorithm to determine which objects are obstacles. Eventually it is hoped that the drone will be able to calculate wind patterns and avoid moving objects such as birds. The findings are published in Low-Power Parallel Algorithms for Single Image based Obstacle Avoidance in Aerial Robots. ANI