Flies are far from simple. Read up on their biomechanics sometime. They have six degrees of freedom--forward, backward, up/down, side to side, and rotating around all three axes. They're fantastically sophisticated flying machines.
Depends on how sophisticated you want the avoidance to be!
On one end of the spectrum, you could have the Roomba-style drone that physically feels the obstacles. Contact on a bumper would instruct the drone to stop, avoiding a flight-ending collision. It would probably need to fly pretty slowly though.
On the other end of the spectrum, you could match the incredible FPV drone pilot Charpu [1] with onboard AI. Flying full speed through very narrow gaps with a long term goal in mind.
Flies fly in far less cluttered environments than drones do (relative to their size and manoeuvrability). Something like a wood pigeon would be a better example. Still, it's not something that should require an AGI. :P
What we really miss is an ADS-B low-cost variant for drones. Safety requirements are different if ones takes into account the unmanned characteristic of drones. Furthermore it will be a great exercise in solving the known problems with the existing version. The main idea of broadcasting navigation data is worth the shot to optimise even more the use of airspace. Without lives at risk technical iteration can be, at least in theory, faster. We need more IETF-style drafts and RFCs rather than classic standards (i.e that require often more than 10 years to reach the market) to see a clever use of such a technology in our daily-routine.
ADS-B is not drone specific, but it is very useful to make drones more safe. The problem in the real world is that many pilots of small aircraft refuse to use ADS-B. For some, there is concern about the government tracking their movements, and of course there's extra cost for extra equipment.
There's also concern already that it's way too easy to spoof ADS-B with false data, and that it won't scale well to the number of drones expected to be flying.
[+] [-] smegel|9 years ago|reply
And we have self driving cars, arguably far more complex than the relatively simple task of flying through empty space.
[+] [-] mdonahoe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PhasmaFelis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdonahoe|9 years ago|reply
On one end of the spectrum, you could have the Roomba-style drone that physically feels the obstacles. Contact on a bumper would instruct the drone to stop, avoiding a flight-ending collision. It would probably need to fly pretty slowly though.
On the other end of the spectrum, you could match the incredible FPV drone pilot Charpu [1] with onboard AI. Flying full speed through very narrow gaps with a long term goal in mind.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MBW8zoZUR4
[+] [-] taneq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] th0ma5|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbyte|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asynchronous13|9 years ago|reply
There's also concern already that it's way too easy to spoof ADS-B with false data, and that it won't scale well to the number of drones expected to be flying.
[+] [-] turbohedgehog|9 years ago|reply