The application of drones continues to advance and so does the technology, with aerial vehicles becoming faster, swifter and more accurate (or at least less accident prone).Technology is even leading to autonomous drones being more precise compared with drones operated by humans.
Digital Journal undertakes a review of the latest advances in drone technology.
Drones are better than humans
A new study finds that drones can be configured to operate more accurately with self-autonomous technology compared with the same model of drone operated by a human pilot. This is due to the development of a new algorithm.
With the study, researchers compared an autonomously flying quadrotor against two human pilots in a drone race. The novel algorithm at the heart of the autonomous drone was able to calculate time-optimal trajectories that fully consider the drones’ limitations in a faster and more precise fashion when measured against the human operators.
It is hoped the algorithm will have a commercial application. The outcome of the study appears in the journal Science Robotics, titled “Time-optimal planning for quadrotor waypoint flight.”
Drones successfully negotiate obstacles
With a further algorithm development, a different study has deployed an algorithm to help drones find the fastest route around obstacles without crashing. Following the study, it is expected that the system will enable fast, nimble drones for time-critical operations such as search and rescue.
The algorithm was trained by simulating thousands of racing scenarios, each with a different flight path and speed pattern.
In trials, the researchers revealed that a drone trained with their algorithm successfully flew through a simple obstacle course 20 percent faster compared with a drone trained on conventional planning algorithms.
The study is outlined in the journal The International Journal of Robotics Research, with the paper “Multi-fidelity black-box optimization for time-optimal quadrotor maneuvers.”
Insects drive novel drones
Technologists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed an insect-size drone with soft actuators (something similar to muscles). The actuators are agile and resilient to collisions.
Research shows how the actuators (built from piezoelectric ceramic materials) advance aerial robots’ repertoire, enabling them to operate in cramped spaces and withstand collisions. The actuators flap at nearly 500 times per second. The study appears in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics, in the paper “Collision Resilient Insect-Scale Soft-Actuated Aerial Robots With High Agility.”
