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Flying into the future [China Daily: Hong Kong Edition](China Daily: Hong Kong Edition Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing experiment with their drone called 'throne'. [Photos by Kuang Linhua / China Daily] Drones are being built that can deliver pizzas, herd sheep and steal your identity. Wang Shanshan and Yang Yang tell you what you need to know about the machines that may be a blessing - or a curse. Would you be pleased if you ordered a pizza and instead of arriving via a deliveryman on a scooter, it is flown across the sky and dropped at your feet? Or even better, you don't order a pizza but one gets delivered anyway, thanks to a misguided drone? Amazon testing delivery with drones Drone hobbyists taking off in China Online retail giant Amazon.com made headlines in 2013 when it announced that within five years, its "Octocopter" drones will fly packages directly to your doorstep in 30 minutes. Six months before that, pizza chain Dominos released videos of its DomiCopter, an eco-friendly machine capable of carrying pizzas in heat-protective bags for long distances without refueling, similar to how an eagle would carry a rabbit. Drones were the first aircraft to enter Ludian county in Southwest China's Yunnan province on Aug 3 after a 6.5-magnitude earthquake hit the area. More than 600 people were killed in the natural disaster. The drones took pictures and sent them back via radio waves. As a result, rescuers already had a bird's-eye view of the area when they arrived in the quake zone. China's civil research on drones is mainly carried out on campuses such as Tsinghua University and Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Researchers at Tsinghua University beat 31 other institutions from the United States, Germany and elsewhere when they won the International Aerial Robotics Competition in August 2013. The US-based Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International has held the competition every year since 1991. The Tsinghua drone, called "throne", flew on its own, without human control. It went through a small window and entered a hotel corridor. It recognized the right number on the door of one of the rooms and entered and searched the room, which turned out to be a suite. It found the USB disk that it was looking for in a box on a corner table in the inner room of the suite, grabbed the disk, and replaced it with an identical one. It then flew the "stolen" disk to those waiting outside. Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing experiment with their drone called 'throne'. [Photos by Kuang Linhua / China Daily] Drones like "throne" use cutting-edge technology. They can help with daily tasks, but should be used with caution. Below are some basic facts about drones. 1. A drone can "see" where it is and its surroundings: "A drone has to first of all understand where it is," says Li Yipeng, researcher at Tsinghua's Department of Automation who leads the drone team. This is easier to do in open spaces, where a drone can use the GPS to locate itself. Stanford University in the US won the International Aerial Robotics Competition in 1995 by applying GPS on its drone. No other institutions knew GPS well enough at the time. In enclosed spaces, such as houses, tombs and mines, a drone sends out lasers to detect the shapes of surrounding objects and its distances to them. But it cannot detect the color or texture of the objects. Tsinghua is now focusing its research on making drones recognize visible lightwaves (the lights able to be seen by the human eye), so that drones can "see" their surroundings almost exactly as humans do. 2. A drone can "think" for itself and decide where to go, what to do: Many drones, usually those with two wings, are controlled remotely by "drone pilots". Others, many of which are smaller in size and have four or more propellers, carry a mini-computer with them, which functions as the brain, according to Li at Tsinghua University. After "seeing" the surroundings, the "brain" analyzes the information and decides how to complete the mission, which is pre-coded. These autonomous drones are supported by a remote computer, which does calculations for them and communicates via radio waves. Drones can easily take off, land and fly themselves. "They are already smart, and the goal of autonomy is to have them act like humans," says Li. Amazon testing delivery with drones Drone hobbyists taking off in China 3. A drone constantly adjusts itself to adapt to changes in the environment: Drones always embrace changes in the environment, analyze them and find solutions. They have clear goals, and are never moody. They constantly observe the environment and make flying decisions accordingly. They also have to always adjust so they can maintain stability when in the air, says Li. Because it keeps leaning toward different sides when in the air, the GPS coordinates that it receives are always changing. Therefore, one of the greatest challenges for an autonomous drone is to always adjust the coordinates so that it can be still in the air when it needs to. 4. A drone can be a policeman: On Oct 1 in Nanjing, an 80-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer's got lost in the mountains. More than 20 policemen searched fruitlessly for three hours. As the sun went down, the police flew a drone into the mountains, and the robot found the woman within 30 minutes. Traffic police in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, experimented with employing drones to fly above the city's major roads in November. The drones reported on accidents, illegal parking and high traffic volumes. Police successfully prevented traffic jams based on the information provided. In June 2011, in North Dakota in the US, a family who stole three cows was arrested by police with help from a drone. There was a standoff between the family and a SWAT team. The drone located three armed men in the family, and helped the authorities capture them safely. Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing experiment with their drone called 'throne'. [Photos by Kuang Linhua / China Daily] 5. A drone can herd animals: At the International Aerial Robotics Competition, held in August, teams from around the world were asked to get their drone to guide 10 smaller "sheep robots" into a designated zone using their drones, and avoid the four larger "wolf robots". The drone herded the animals by flying down and touching the "sheep robots", making them change direction, says Li. None of the drones has been particularly successful. In Northwest China's Alkin Mountains, drones have been used since December to monitor endangered wild yaks. The yaks walk out of sand hills every morning, drink and eat on a small oasis, and return to the hills. Drones follow them around, staying beside them like flies. 6. A drone can be an archaeologist or a treasure hunter: Between 1998 and 2000, the annual International Aerial Robotics Competition included a contest in which participants used an autonomous drone to fly into a collapsing tomb and take pictures of the treasures. It was performed with relative ease, Li says. Wuhan University's archaeologists are using drones to survey the vast sites dating back to Shang Dynasty (16th-11th century BC) and Zhou Dynasty (11th century BC-256 BC) in Hubei province, and to build three-dimensional models with the data that drones provide. Amazon testing delivery with drones Drone hobbyists taking off in China 7. A drone can help journalists: The journalism school at the University of Missouri in the US launched a drone journalism program in 2013. Journalism drones are being used by students at the university to gather video and photographs for stories relating to science, the environment and agriculture. A US journalist covering the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 used a remote-controlled drone to capture videos of police cracking down on protestors. His drone, a modified Parrot AR 300, can be bought for about $300 on Amazon.com. 8. A drone can steal all your smartphone data: Drone maker Sensepost demonstrated their creation "Snoopy" at a conference in Singapore in March. The robot, named after the dog in the Peanut cartoons, can fly near a crowd and steal all the data from smartphones in the vicinity. Identification information, passwords and banking data can all be accessed in an instant. "Snoopy" does this by impersonating a network that the phone has previously used, and automatically switches on the Wi-Fi. "A drone is ultimately a platform that has infinite functions, depending on the tasks it is given and the tools that are added," says Li. "There is no doubt that the era of drones has arrived." Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing experiment with their drone called 'throne'. [Photos by Kuang Linhua / China Daily] Li Yipeng fixes a model plane in his lab.[Photos by Kuang Linhua / China Daily] Li Yipeng has a trial flight on the campus.[Photos by Kuang Linhua / China Daily] (c) 2014 China Daily Information Company. All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |