WATCH: Autonomous, High-speed Drone Flies Indoors

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The not-so-crazy scientists at the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently showcased the nifty advances they made in autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flight. The team behind the Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) programme released a video of their work-in-progress drone flying completely independently inside their testing warehouse at speeds reaching 20 metres a second. That’s over 70 km/h, and is blinding fast.

Conventional autonomous UAV navigation relies on GPS, which can be highly unreliable inside buildings, if the signal even manages to penetrate through the building’s shell at all. To overcome this challenge, the FLA team is developing algorithms that require less computational power, communication, and human intervention to safely operate drones and achieve goals like navigating around obstacles or in a disordered environment. Their aim is to allow drone to navigate rooms, hallways, and similar locations without the need for a remote pilot.

DARPA threw down the gauntlet two years ago, and as this latest video demonstration shows, the made good strides in development and have achieved all the goals the agency set in 2014.

The drone in the video is based on a commercial DJI Flamewheel with a 3DR Pixhawk autopilot for the airframe. Despite of its tiny size, the drone has no trouble carrying inertia sensors, an HD camera, and sonar.

Next, the team wants to improve the onboard algorithms so that the UAV will fly more precisely in its trajectory, take sharper turns, and perform complex aerial manoeuvres without losing speed. In the video you can see the drone slowing down significantly when faced with an obstacle, but the team promises this is about to change.