AST Digital Magazine July 2017 Digital-July | Page 33

Volume 14 July 2017 Edition Smart Quadcopters Find their Way without Humans or GPS Milestone series of tests have quadcopters slaloming through woodlands, swerving around obstacles in a hangar, and re- porting back to their starting point all by themselves (Cour- tesy of DARPA) Phase 1 of DARPA’s Fast Lightweight Au- tonomy (FLA) program concluded recently following a series of obstacle-course flight tests in central Florida. Over four days, three teams of DARPA-support- ed researchers huddled under shade tents in the sweltering Florida sun, fine-tuning their sensor- laden quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during the intervals between increasingly difficult runs. DARPA’s FLA program is advancing technol- ogy to enable small unmanned quadcopters to fly autonomously through cluttered buildings and obstacle-strewn environments at fast speeds (up to 20 meters per second, or 45 mph) using on- board cameras and sensors as “eyes” and smart algorithms to self-navigate. (Learn More, courtesy of DARPA and YouTube) Potential applications for the technology in- clude: • Safely and quickly scanning for threats inside a building before military teams enter • Searching for a downed pilot in a heavily for- ested area or jungle in hostile territory where overhead imagery can’t see through the tree canopy • Locating survivors following earthquakes or other disasters when entering a damaged structure could be unsafe 33