Dutch scientists unveil miniature drone that could save lives

The Manila Times

Dutch scientists unveil miniature drone that could save lives  Dutch scientists unveil the country's first drone laboratory looking at autonomous miniature drones and how they can help humans find gas leaks in factories or take part in search and rescue operations. The scientists said they drew their inspiration from nature, looking at how ants, bees and birds behave in flocks. 'Together they do really beautiful things and things that they could definitely not do by themselves. And we want to instill the same kind of capabilities also in robots,' said Guido de Croon, TU Delft Swarming Lab director.   JAN HENNOP/AFP VIDEO  Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe  Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net    Follow us:  Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook  Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram  Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter  DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion    Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital    Check out our Podcasts:  Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify  Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts  Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic  Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer  Tune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein   #TheManilaTimes  #worldnews  #artificialintelligence  #technology

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00:00This is the thing that works.

00:02Ah, yeah.

00:04That's the thing.

00:05That's the one that works.

00:07Oh, that's the other one.

00:08No, not this one.

00:25Yeah, I know.

00:26Very strange things are coming up.

00:28Maybe we should go to the train station.

00:56We do research on swarming.

00:58We do this in the context of various applications.

01:01For example, how can a swarm of small drones find a gas leak?

01:05Or how can drones collaborate to find a missing person in a search and rescue scenario?

01:12And then we look at how they can coordinate in the best way with their limited resources to achieve these tasks.

01:22At this point, the demos we give still use external infrastructure,

01:27which looks at the drones from the outside and helps the drones to know, for example, where the other drones are.

01:34But in this process, towards the real world, they have to become fully autonomous.

01:39And this means that these swarms of robots will be able to also operate in an environment that's unprepared.

01:47And so if we have a building that's partially collapsed and we want to know are there people inside,

01:53obviously there's no cameras installed on the inside to help the drones.

01:57And so they have to do everything by themselves.

02:00And this means that they have to carry all their sensors, all their processing.

02:04And this is exactly, of course, what you find in nature.

02:06Like honeybees also don't need GPS to navigate.

02:10And that's exactly the kind of capabilities we want to learn from and also give to our robots.

02:17We look very much at the principle that swarms of animals and the animals in the swarm,

02:23they actually follow very simple behaviors like birds.

02:27They look at their closest neighbors in the flock and they do things like,

02:31oh, I don't want to be too close because they don't want to collide.

02:34But I also don't want to be the only one to be away from the flock, right?

02:38So they want to get closer. They align with each other.

02:41And by following such simple rules, you get these beautiful patterns that are very useful for the birds, also against predators.

02:48So at that level, we draw inspiration and we try to make such simple rules also for our robots,

02:54but then for the applications we want to tackle.

02:57And it would be really great if we get a bit closer to actually the astonishing intelligence of tiny creatures like honeybees.

03:08Thank you.

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