Tiny Humanoid Robot Learning to Fly Real Airplanes

September 19th, 2014

Definitely see: Lack of Experienced Pilots, Boneheaded FAA Policies and Over Reliance on Flight Automation Systems Will Cause More Plane Crashes.

Via: IEEE:

The little robot in the picture above is a PIBOT, a small, very low-cost humanoid (actually a Bioloid Premium from Robotis). It’s been slightly modified to be able to work the controls of a scaled-down, simulated aircraft cockpit, as in the pic above. PIBOT is able to identify and use all of the buttons and switches and stuff that you’d find in the cockpit of a normal light aircraft designed for humans…

Most of the inputs come from the simulator itself (roll, pitch, yaw, airspeed, GPS location), although the robot does use vision for some things, like identifying the runway using edge detection. And this is all it takes, according to the researchers, who state that: “PIBOT can satisfy the various requirements specified in the flying handbook by the Federal Aviation Administration.”

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