Autonomous Plane from MIT Makes a Parking Garage Into A Slalom Course

Have you ever flown those remote-controlled airplanes and helicopters indoors?  If so, you might remember how it may have taken a while to learn the controls properly to get your flying device going forward fast. That, and learning how to avoid any and every obstacle locating inside your house.  Thanks to the plane designed by the Robust Robotics Group at MIT, we may in fact have finally found an exception to that.  Check out the video after the break.  

The teams armed the plane with a fairly standard Intel Atom processor, a few on-board sensors, and with some extra advanced calculations, this plane is able to dodge obstacles with relative ease, even at higher speeds. Watching this awesome piece of tech cruise through a closed course is amazing enough, but to really show-off the capabilities of the plane, the team took to a parking garage where they completed a 7 minute flight, reaching speeds up to 22 miles per hour, while covering about 3 miles in distance.  Plus, the plane only came within inches of a collision.

Impressive? Yes, yes it is…

[Thanks MIT]