Normally I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to flying vehicle tech. It’s not that I’m not interested – on the contrary, there are some really cool videos out there. It’s just not my area of expertise; I’m not all that familiar with them. But like any good tech addict, I love a good demonstration of amazing ability.
One such demonstration (found thanks to Evan at BotJunkie) is this Quadrotor autonomous UAV, from GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM]
The innovative people at GRASP lab seem to be working on a number of cool projects, including being one of the 11 members of Willow Garage’s PR2 Robot Beta Program.
Willow Garage PR2 Robot
Their proposal for the PR2:
University of Pennsylvania, GRASP Laboratory with the proposal PR2GRASP: From Perception and Reasoning to Grasping
The GRASP Lab proposal aims to tackle some of the challenges facing household robotics. These challenges include tracking people and planning for navigation in dynamic environments, and transferring handheld objects between robots and humans. Their contributions will include giving PR2 a tool belt to change its gripper on the fly, helping it track and navigate around people, and performing difficult two-arm tasks like opening spring-loaded doors.