[HN Gopher] New algorithm flies drones faster than human racing ...
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New algorithm flies drones faster than human racing pilots
Author : jonbaer
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-07-24 13:59 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.media.uzh.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.media.uzh.ch)
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://dronedj.com/2021/07/22/ai-beats-human-
| drone-racing-p..., which points to
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210721142013.h...,
| which is a copy of this.
| djmips wrote:
| To the researchers: The video orange highlight was merely
| obscuring detail not helping.
| matthew-wegner wrote:
| I don't think this could beat a serious human competitor. Random
| example of the upper end of human skill:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg1r-qJ117M
| Dr_Mike wrote:
| On page 32 of the paper they provide rankings of the two pilots
| against whom the automated system flew (Michael Isler and
| Timothy Trowbridge). My personal opinion of course, but I would
| call both of these pilots "serious human competitors" given
| both have been competing since 2017 in international events and
| received many podium finishes. But that's also beside the
| point.
|
| This paper is about generating time-optimal trajectories
| through waypoints given the system's physical constraints (e.g.
| limitations in thrust and rotational rates). A time-optimal
| trajectory is a trajectory which is time optimal--meaning that
| no faster trajectory exists. Given that this algorithm
| generates the fastest possible trajectory through the waypoints
| given the physical constraints of the system, it would be
| impossible for even a "serious" human competitor to beat it.
| djmips wrote:
| Perhaps, this could be used in simulation training to bring
| up the level of the top pilots. It could illuminate where
| they are losing time to an ideal pass.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I agree with others this article is pointless. However I found
| the PDF of the paper here:
|
| http://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/docs/ScienceRobotics21_Foehn.pdf
| chmod775 wrote:
| So obviously the computer vision part here is nothing novel, but
| also the algorithm itself seems like the kind of problem that
| computer game developers have likely solved a few hundred times
| already, thought nothing of it, and moved on.
| Dr_Mike wrote:
| You are incorrect. Generating trajectories is easy. Many well
| known techniques exist that do pretty well, and yes this is
| done in computer games all the time (as well as in many other
| fields).
|
| Quickly generating time-optimal trajectories for under-actuated
| mechanical systems with actuator constraints is interesting,
| and as a researcher in this field I can assure you that the
| technique in this paper is novel and is interesting--if it were
| not it wouldn't have been published in the journal Science...
| toxik wrote:
| So not to be needlessly critical but this is not news. Of course
| a robot is faster in a known map with perfect state information.
| They have always been. The problem has always been exactly those
| two things: static map known beforehand, and perfect state
| information.
|
| The paper also don't claim this as the contribution so this
| article is just... misinformation? I think there's a word for
| this, willfully being flabbergasted by basically anything so you
| can write an article about it.
| kakadu wrote:
| > willfully being flabbergasted by basically anything so you
| can
|
| Off-topic, but is there an a word in English for this?
| asdfologist wrote:
| Sensationalism?
| teddyh wrote:
| A bit like those actors in infomercials who are somehow failing
| to perform simple tasks, and need a plastic product to help
| them.
| danuker wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/wheredidthesodago/
| Youden wrote:
| The word for this kind of article is "blogspam".
|
| For anyone who finds it as worthless as I do, the original
| press release the article mangles is at [0] and the DOI of the
| paper is 10.1126/scirobotics.abh1221.
|
| As for the work, it's one thing to say "Of course a robot is
| faster in a known map with perfect state information.", it's
| another thing to actually _build_ a working system.
|
| Research is an incremental process and this seems to be like a
| meaningful step.
|
| [0]: https://www.media.uzh.ch/en/Press-Releases/2021/Drone-
| Race.h...
| machinehermiter wrote:
| Yea I think this is a bit harsh. I don't think it is quite such
| a trivial task to figure out when a FPV drone has such degrees
| of freedom. It can basically change to any direction at any
| time. Then the known space is the air in the room.The humans
| are also training on a known course.
|
| A legit drone racing pilot is incredible at this also so it is
| not like there is a ton of meat on the bone to pick at.
|
| It is cool from the perspective of racing drones even if less
| impressive from the perspective of AGI or something.
| toxik wrote:
| A drone can in fact not accelerate in any direction at any
| time. It can only accelerate along the thrust vector which is
| the normal of the plane that the rotors sit on.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| That's a distinction without a difference. In theory, of
| course you're correct. In practice, your parent comment is
| correct.
|
| The rotation rate in the roll or pitch axis is around 1080
| degrees per second - 3 complete revolutions per second.
| Many freestyle pilots fly higher rates than me.
|
| I can, and do, go from 80mph in one direction, flip
| 180degrees to accelerate back to 80mph in the direction i
| just came - a 160mph change of speed in around 5-6 seconds
| approx.
|
| The only axis i cant turn very fast in is yaw (quads have
| poor yaw authority compared to other axes) but even then
| it's fast enough most people would consider it instant.
| rightbyte wrote:
| There has to be gliding too and of course accelerating
| towards earth?
| arsome wrote:
| This is basically just the real world equivalent of a tool-
| assisted speedrun.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| The new part here is that they have found a way to find the
| optimal path without using simplifications. So in a way, the
| true progress of the paper is a new mathematical loss
| minimization technique.
|
| Just because you have all the information doesn't mean you can
| solve a constraint system before the heat death of the
| universe. Otherwise, NP hard problems like traveling salesman
| wouldn't be so scary.
| dahart wrote:
| When before have drone robot quadcopters been faster than the
| best human drone racers, do you have any examples of that - a
| source or link? Are you speculating about theory or talking
| about a real event that happened, aside from this one?
|
| Maybe what you mean is that it's not surprising, because it was
| inevitable. That I would completely agree with. But it's simply
| not true to say that robots have always been faster than
| humans. There was a first automated quadcopter that beat
| skilled humans, and it happened recently, because quadcopters
| are a recent development, and automated quadcopters are even
| more recent.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > The paper also don't claim this as the contribution so this
| article is just... misinformation?
|
| Given the website URL, I'm not the least bit surprised this is
| over hyped.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I love the ETHZ has this department of playing with quadcopters.
| They may have shut down the Flying Machine Arena, but clearly the
| main theme survives.
|
| Here's where this technology was ten years ago: motion capture
| and external flight computers playing pong.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CR5y8qZf0Y
| speakeron wrote:
| This is from the University of Zurich (UZH), not the ETHZ.
| They're different institutions (UZH is a cantonal university,
| ETHZ is a federal one).
| jeffbee wrote:
| My mistake! In that case, I just love drones. Also Zurich.
| platz wrote:
| Pretrained and external cameras, so a completely synthetic
| environment
| Dr_Mike wrote:
| This paper is not about machine learning. "Training" has
| nothing to do with the approach. External cameras are used
| because this paper is about trajectory generation and not about
| vision.
|
| The paper presents an approach of generating a time-optimal
| trajectory through waypoints given physical limitations of the
| underactuated system. This is interesting and novel, and as
| demonstrated works very well. The group from which they come
| also work a lot with high-speed machine vision, and one of the
| next research steps will be combining this trajectory
| generation algorithm with onboard computer vision.
| datameta wrote:
| I wonder if we can take hundreds or thousands of such 3D map
| and accelerometer log pairs in order to train a model to be
| able to understand how to generically approach any new course.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| In general no, because sadly current AI transfers very badly
| to unseen new environments.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| The future could be humans inventing and learning new skills,
| then an algorithm quickly mastering and automating them (with the
| help of those humans)... makes you wonder if that kind of neural
| plasticity is even possible if your job was invented and made
| obsolete even faster than today. Can humans get better at this
| kind of creative flexibility?
| [deleted]
| roenxi wrote:
| The next big research question: Will it be feasible to have
| humans in the loop for military operations or will all the
| killing and destruction need to be 100% controlled by algorithms?
| bluescrn wrote:
| Why still the fear and paranoia over drones? Especially small
| quadcopters?
|
| If you want to be scared of military tech, be scared of cruise
| missiles and ICBMs. Killing from huge distances away at the
| press of a button isn't new.
| Xorlev wrote:
| What relevance does this have to the article? You could argue
| this research has military application, but it's pretty far
| removed from Skynet.
|
| It's certainly not the next big research question.
| djmips wrote:
| They didn't mention Skynet. That's a whole other ball of wax.
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Think the general point is the degree of deadly automation
| here.
|
| Apparently drones + grenades are already a big feature of the
| battleground between Armenia and Azerbaijan
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(page generated 2021-07-24 23:01 UTC)