[Via Engadget]

I have seen some pretty amazing autonomous maneuvers with standard helicopters.  I always assumed that quads should be capable of pretty crazy maneuvers but have never seen any.  Well the wait is over.  Check out the project page over at Daniel Mellinger’s UPenn site.  On a site note.  it looks like perching is going to be the new must have for MAV’s.

[via DIY Drones]

A company called Skilligent put out this video demonstrating computer vision based navigation that uses landmark detection.  I’d love to see an open source version of this capability.

This is a very cool project out of Stanford. It is a MAV that can land on rough surfaces and hang there.  The possibilities that come with this capability are far reaching.  Recharging, hiding, surveillance and seeking refuge are just a few.  Put an eInk skin on its back, weaponize it and you have a nasty little urban MAV.

via DIY Drones

Logic Sniffer

Logic Sniffers? Bus Pirates?? IR Toys???

Names can be deceiving. These little gizmos allow unfettered, real time access to the bits and bytes flying around us all day long. Now if only they had some wireless tools

Most of those issues could be resolved and are probably on the dev team’s radar.
Check out the rest of their site hackbloc.org for other cool stuff.

This is a pretty nice talk by the guy developing the AttoPilot. It has a very impressive set of features compared to some of the more popular autopilots out there. I was particularly impressed by the Vector Navigation features and in flight trim and PID gain adjustments.

Via DIYDrones

Tricopter - Flips and a little bit of gardening from W. Thielicke on Vimeo.

I like seeing demonstrations of the aerobatic abilities of this sort of platform. I am also curious about the feasibility of a fail-over mode for a quad rotor that has lost a rotor. Overall very cool project and pretty cheap. Check out his blog for the build details Good work William.

This would probably not be useful in combat (though I would not want to be on the hot side of it). It is, however, a great example of the power of one tinkerer and cheap, available hardware. Alter the idea slightly (throw in an autonomous vehicle) and you could have a very disruptive weapon.

While I was browsing the RepRap site yet again (I neeeeeed to get a reprap). I came across and advert for the mbed. It is billed as a rapid prototyping platform (which it is) but it has a TON of features including 12 bit adc, USB host, . You can pre-order now and save some money. The only downside I see is that the IDE and compiler look to be in browser only. I’m sure someone will come up with a solution for that.

MikroKopter - HexaKopter from Holger Buss on Vimeo.

Here is a nice demo video of MikroKotper’s new HexaKopter. Lists at around $1500 which is pretty good considering it’s capabilities. 1Kg is a lot of payload. I’d love to see some numbers on loiter times but overall this looks like a fantastic platform for photography or whatever else. I may just have to get one.

This seems to be the next iteration of Berkeley’s cutout robot. I think the most interesting part about this concept are the build process and materials. Every time I see something like this I am reminded that I REALLY WANT a laser cutter :).

Here is a really cool demonstration of soft body robotics and locomotion using “jamming”.  As far as I can see they use a balloon filled with sand (kind of like those stress balls) and then suck the air out of it to make it maintain a more rigid shape. This seems like it would be fairly easy to replicate cheaply.

I remember seeing a demo of a delta robot a while ago and being very impressed.  I have seen them used on assembly lines to quickly sort and organise objects but there are loads of other applications.  I know of one company that uses a delta design for a tactile feedback capable interface device.  I wonder if this sort of device would be good for routing/drilling/cnc type work?  If you are interested in the maths behind this sort of design you can check out this pdf.

via Hackaday

The folks over at InventGeek just released the plans and tutorial videos for making a paintball turret with pan (I think) and tilt. I really like these sorts of projects. They deal with a lot of the problems one would deal with when making a real gun turret…plus they are just fun to watch.

Via Hackaday

This is a cool project that aims to be a “universal remote” for those cheap IR controlled toy helicopters.The same group is also working on a visual tracking system as well. The main problem with IR is that you are basically limited to line of sight.  Even with that limitation the systems could be used for small scale simulations etc.  Kind of a poor man’s version of MIT’s SWARM environment.

Via HackADay

This is kind of a goofy video at first glance but when you think about it it is pretty cool.  This guy rigged up his Easystar based UAV with a FPV camera and some model rockets and fireworks.  It looks like great fun, flying around and shooting rockets but scale this up a little bit and you could really do some damage.

Via Hack A Day

Strobit is a neat open source project from strobotics creating a small cheap Arduino based wireless widget.  They are creating “personalities” which look like different sets of functionality.  It looks like they are working on mesh networking and solar power which would make this a great candidate for the Short Hop Messenger project.

As rapid prototyping /3d printing and DIY continue to converge we are going to see more and more of this sort of thing.  I did some digging and found his list of parts but none of them are printable by others at the moment.  He also has a forum at Shapeways detailing the build and a link to a video of it flying.  OpenWarfare should definitely try to get an open source version of this project together.

Via DIYDrones

Soaring

This is a really interesting group that is attempting to make a UAV that can use thermals to stay aloft.  Their ultimate goal is a cross country unmanned flight.  So far they have made pretty good progress.  I wonder how far you could go my mixing solar and soaring modes.

A pretty interesting talk on the mathematics of insugent warfare.  The two things I thought were particularly interstign where how they collected the data from normal news streams and the idea that asemmetric warfare has a set mathematical distrobution.

Wow. As a taxpayer I wonder from time to time where all the money goes.  I’m guessign DAS took a fair chunk of it.  I think we sometimes forget just how far ahead we are in the arms race.  I see something like that and the size of that gap quickly becomes apparent.  What a cool system, I’d hate to go up against an F-35 with a 4G fighter.  I wonder how feasable it would be to create a DIY system that merges the output from 6 cheap CMOS cameras into a 360 degree view of the world…

With home fabrication becoming more of a reality every day it is only a matter of time before the average person has the capability to manufacture high quality firearms on their desktop.  The folks over at CNCGuns have some pretty cool toys and have decided to put them to use making ar15 style lowers and uppers.  If you have a nice CNC mill or $10,000 laying around you can download their solidworks models and build an upper and/or lower yourself.  I’m not sure about legal issues although I think as long as it is complient with state and federal laws and as long as you dont’ sell them you are OK…but don’t take my word on it.

I have always been a big fan of designs based on bugs.  Here is a new one that I founds at HackADay.  As you can see it really scoots right along.  It has pnuematic legs that are power by a master pump (I think).  I would love to see what kind of terrain it can handle.  You can see more at the projects page at Stanford.

One of my favorite pieces of 3D modeling software is Blender.  It is, in my opinion, the best open source 3D modeling platform out there.  I have been using it for quick and dirty data visualization for a while new.  It has Pythion scripting built in which makes it very hacker friendly.  I have even been able to set it up to pass camera output into OpenCV for quick testing in a virtual environment.  I was looking through the Blender 2.5 wiki page and cama across the Blender For Robotics page.  I would suggest checking it out.  One major missing piece in the DIY robotics world is a simple virtual environment for testing and rapid prototyping.  Source code for the demo shown can be found here.

I came across SenseFly.com while paroozing DIY Drones.  What I found particularly interesting is that they use optical sensors and directly map the “optic flow” from the sensor to control signals.  According to the original research site they have to estimate position and movement usign their method.  Check out their research site at the EPFL school of engineering if you are interested in more detail.

I guess it was only a matter of time.  This outfit is now selling plans for wifi enabled remotely operated gun turret.  I’ll be really interested to see what sort of legal issues they run into.  Because they are only sellign plans they are probably protected to some degree but the sellign of those plans might pose a problem.  Openwarfare.org could run into very similer issuse so they may be a valuable test case for us.