It seems as if last year’s news and articles were dominated by unmanned aerial vehicles and algorithms developed for their autonomy in different environments. We got a couple of new and affordable robotic toys to play with, there were numeral examples of robots whose design or locomotion principles were inspired by nature, and ASIMO turned… »

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) funded a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program which examines birds’ perceptual and maneuvering abilities when flying at high speeds through complex environments, such as forests or urban settings in order to improve performance of small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in those settings. Aside increasing their agility, these small UAVs… »

Inspired by the swarming patterns of animals in nature, an aerospace engineering PhD student from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, is using biomimicry to develop an algorithm which simulates novel and chaotic flight formations of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The results could be used in order to improve their performance in marine… »

Max Planck Institute (MPI) researchers are using computer simulations and prototypes in order to enhance the simulations control of multiple robots. They are developing flying multi-robot systems, which receive instructions from a  user and fulfill the commands in an autonomous manner. Navigated by a human operator, four or more of these Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)… »