Indoor flying plane smart enough to avoid obstacles while flying in a tight spot

You know for sure that walking through the hallowed hallways of MIT alone would make you feel as though your IQ total was raised by a few more points, due to all the intelligence that oozes out from that place. Well, a bunch of MIT grad students who are currently studying Robust Robotics have managed to come up with a plane design that I am quite sure the military would be interested in – this particular plane was specially designed to be able to operate in tight spots, where it avoids pillars and low ceilings in a magical manner sans the assistance of a GPS or external help. This is made possible thanks to an on-board laser range finder and inertial sensors in order to help it fly correctly, like a Batman, I suppose.

The plane itself will have an Intel Atom processor running at its core, allowing it to maneuver through the low-ceiling, multi-pillared garage at MIT’s Stata Center without so much so as suffering from a single scratch. It would most probably be a matter of time before the suits from the military show up and start to make a steroids-injected version of this for use on the battlefield and other covert black-ops scenarios.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gadgets, Military
Tags: invention, mit