Quad-Rotor Flying Robot at ICRA

[Admin]

I filmed this modified quad-rotor flying robot at ICRA 2007 (Internation Conference on Robotics & Automation) in Rome Italy.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PzNL3bEq_Q" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PzNL3bEq_Q</a>

[Brandon121233]

thats incredible how stable it looks, did the guy have a lot of practice flying it or could anyone do it? I have tried to fly a radio controlled chopper once and I could barley get it off the ground, it takes tons of practice to be ably to fly one stably. Looks like a good hovering robot base to me!

[Admin]

Hmmmm I didnt ask him about practice, but I do know the stability is controlled by sensors.

[hgordon]

Is this from a company called "XFO" ?  I heard about a prototype quad flier that is supposed to have better specs than Draganflyer, but have not been able to get any details.

[Admin]

I looked up the paper they published and this is their abstract:

We describe an efficient, reliable, and robust four-rotor flying platform for indoor and outdoor navigation. Currently, similar platforms are controlled at low frequencies due to hardware and software limitations. This causes uncertainty in position control and instable behavior during fast maneuvers. Our flying platform offers a 1 kHz control frequency and motor update rate, in combination with powerful brushless DC motors in a light-weight package. Following a minimalistic design approach this system is based on a small number of low-cost components. Its robust performance is achieved by using simple but reliable highly optimized algorithms. The robot is small, light, and can carry payloads of up to 350g.

Reading their paper (that they never published online), Energy-Efficient Autonomous Four-Rotor Flying Robot Controlled at 1 Khz (1.1mb), it appears they custom made it themselves . . .

They have an impressive official video that they also didnt post online, so Im uploading it to my server here:
ICRA quad-rotor (4.7mb)
Its a mp4 file that only seems to play with quicktime . . .

[hgordon]

Thanks - I think this is the one I am looking for.  I'll contact them to see if there are plans to produce it commercially.

[Hal9000]

There's this old guy i've seen in the paper recently who built a hovercraft-style design, but it can actually fly. If I remember i'll see if my mum still has that paper.