Collaborate Disseminate
Our understanding of the sensory capabilities of animals has a lot of blanks, and often new discoveries serve as inspiration for new technology. Researchers from the University of Leeds and the Royal Veterinary College have found that mosquitos can navigate in complete darkness by detecting the subtle changes in the …read more
Continue reading Obstacle Avoidance For Drones, Learned From Mosquitoes
Researchers have taken inspiration from a mosquito’s ability to fly and land in the dark to develop a new collision-avoidance sensory system that has been tested on a quadcopter. The international team of scientists, led by Professor Richard Bomphrey a… Continue reading Mosquito night navigation inspires new drone obstacle avoidance system
In order for them to fly beyond line-of-sight of their users, drones have to be constantly “aware” of potential hazards surrounding them on all sides. That’s where the Casia 360 system comes in, as it’s designed to give 360-degree vision to existing dr… Continue reading Add-on tech lets drones detect and avoid obstacles in all directions
Obstacle avoidance is a crucial piece of technology for drones, but commercially-available systems just aren’t fast enough for some situations. Now, engineers at the University of Zurich have developed a new system that gives drones such fast reflexes … Continue reading Drone plays dodgeball to demo fast new obstacle detection system
[Miguel] wanted to get more hands-on experience with Python, so he created a small robotic platform as a testbed. But as such things sometimes go, it turns out the robot he created is a worthy enough project in its own right.
There’s nothing wrong with starting a project just for the experience of it. It’s an excellent way to learn about hardware or software you’ve been meaning to gain some practical experience with, and if you end up having a bit of fun along the way, even better. Getting too bogged down on the “why” can sometimes get in the …read more
Continue reading Low-cost Autonomous Rover will Drive your Projects
Only about two percent of the blind or visually impaired work with guide animals and assistive canes have their own limitations. There are wearable devices out there that take sensor data and turn the world into something a visually impaired person can understand, but these are expensive. The Visioneer is a wearable device that was intended as a sensor package for the benefit of visually impaired persons. The key feature: it’s really inexpensive.
The Visioneer consists of a pair of sunglasses, two cameras, sensors, a Pi Zero, and bone conduction transducers for audio and vibration feedback. The Pi listens to …read more
This interesting project out of MIT aims to use technology to help visually impaired people navigate through the use of a haptic feedback belt, chest-mounted sensors, and a braille display.
The belt consists of a vibration motors controlled by what appears to be a Raspberry Pi (for the prototype anyway) with a distance sensor and camera connected as well. The core algorithm is designed to take input from the camera and distance sensors to compute the distance to obstacles, and to buzz the right motor to alert the user — fairly expected stuff. However, the project has a higher goal: …read more
Continue reading Visual Scanner Turns Obstacles into Braille
