i'd like a few of these

[petercook7]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...lp-troops.html
pretty cool, love the way they move.

[IronWarrior]

Well, that's future warfare there and so much more.

[Whiternoise]

Caveat emptor: you need a room full of high power IR illuminated cameras otherwise this stuff just doesn't work. The future for warfare is likely to remain piloted unmanned vehicles.

[merdat]

Yes, remote drones and 'lasered targets' way to go .

[aidanjt]

Caveat emptor: you need a room full of high power IR illuminated cameras otherwise this stuff just doesn't work. The future for warfare is likely to remain piloted unmanned vehicles.

Squeezing a suitable sensor array into individual units isn't all that difficult if you scale them up to military application. The main purpose here is to get the swarm logic and problem solving for each autonomous unit to work with the whole.

[Whiternoise]

Squeezing a suitable sensor array into individual units isn't all that difficult if you scale them up to military application. The main purpose here is to get the swarm logic and problem solving for each autonomous unit to work with the whole.

Misunderstanding? You need cameras off the unit to track the motion, having a camera onboard wouldn't help. But yeah, the control logic is pretty swish!

MIT has done similar work, but without the need for the tracking system - http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/robochopper2.html

[TheAnimus]

Indeed this is quite cool in a way, but as it needs orchestrating video, a bit erm, can I be harsh and say pointless?

The only cool thing is the quadrocoptor, saw this stuff been done with direct drive buggies 10 years ago.....

If they where using something with onboard camera based, even if hte processing was still having to be done externally, without orchestration, I'd be impressed, as is, not really tbh.

[doyll49]

Microkopter for me:
http://mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/VideoAbspielen?id=216

[Whiternoise]

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/en...ects/uav/news/

That's my friend's PhD project if anyone's interested, designed for autonomous mapping in places where you can't send people. It isn't designed for stunts, but it does have an onboard stereo camera and a very expensive LIDAR

It has 6 rotors too, apparently 4 tends to be harder to fly and much more complicated if one fails.

[doyll49]

Amazing technology isn't it. Wonder what we will be talking about in another 10 years.

[jackobyte]

probably nanoboted ant colonies to replace soldiers
micro sam launchers,mico tanks,micro support aircraft,
all missiles in swarm micro style and the battlefields condensed into 6'x6' squares.
ohh we are getting all command and conquer..ish
seriously well cool ideas just wondering if the micro quad copters can be combated by a simple fly swat though ??