GRASP II, Rise of the multirotor

Amongst other developments shown in the video titled “Aggressive Quadrotor Part II” (revenge of the rotor) the quadrocopter is show to be “capable of recovering from extreme initial conditions” throw it in the air and it will sort its self out & the ability to “quickly generate trajectories to react to dynamic objects” which suggest the potential development of a high level sense and avoid system.

Admittedly the multicopters are orienting themselves through the use of an infrared motion capture systems giving them their exact position so these are only lab developments at the moment. However, the new manuvers being shown here demonstrate the level of accuracy, agility and power of the new breed of VTOL machines.

With the other interesting developments happening at University of Pennsylvania like the autonomous Multi-Floor Indoor Navigation with a Computationally Constrained MAV, it wont take long for some of the lab progress to transfere to constructive applications in real world environment.