Optimising drones is an exercise that involves many collisions, even with the simplest of obstacles. Repairs are therefore a frustrating daily routine for development engineers. Now, engineers at MIT have developed a novel VR training system for drones.
When autonomous drones are trained for indoor flights in complex spaces, there are bound to be a lot of crashes at the beginning. In order to reduce hardware wear and tear MIT researchers has developed a system that allows drones to train in virtual reality. It allows the aircraft to perceive an enriched VR environment in a physically empty space.
Sertac Karaman, Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, believes the system is groundbreaking in terms of the development of fast drones. It could make autonomous aircraft more reactive, faster and more efficient.
Moving borders
Karaman's idea was inspired by drone races. In these races, remote-controlled drones compete against each other and have to overcome a wide variety of obstacles. Karaman asked himself: "Couldn't an autonomous drone be trained to fly just as fast, if not faster, more precisely and with more control than its human-controlled counterparts? In the next two to three years, they want to start competitions with autonomous drones and beat the best human-controlled competitors, says Karaman. To do this, the team will have to develop a completely new training concept.
Source: VR Magazine / Road VR
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