Purdue Drone Tracks a Person in Woods Without GPS or Maps
TechSpot reported that Purdue University’s IDEAS Lab demonstrated a quadcopter tracking a person through a forest without GPS, forest maps, or cloud computing. In a 44-second LinkedIn video posted by professor Aniket Bera, the drone navigates between trees, processes information onboard, and uses occlusion prediction to estimate a target’s direction when the person is hidden. The video labels the motion planner as SUPER and the altitude estimator as FAST-LIO.
The demonstration shows that onboard autonomous navigation can continue when satellite positioning, prior maps, and cloud processing are unavailable, according to TechSpot’s report on Bera’s video.
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Why it matters: Plenty of off-the-shelf drones can tail a cyclist down a trail these days, but most of them still lean on GPS to keep track of where they are. That's a problem in a forest, where a thick canopy can make the signal pretty unreliable. A lab at Purdue University has now shown off a drone that chases a person through the woods with no GPS at all.
Purdue computer science professor Aniket Bera posted the 44-second video on LinkedIn last Friday. It shows a quadcopter from his IDEAS Lab weaving between trees to keep a person in frame. And the drone works it all out on its own computer, without a map of the forest to rely on. Bera says skipping the cloud matters because a drone banking hard around a thin branch can't afford to wait on a server somewhere.
#Purdue University#IDEAS Lab#SUPER#FAST-LIO#MaRS Lab#Intel NUC#Livox Mid-360