Getting hands-off with self-piloting helicopters

Thursday 20 November

We can’t help but fear for pilots. Not in a physically harmful way you understand, but more in a professional sense. You see, we’ve glimpsed the future, and let’s just say it doesn’t have humans sitting in the cockpits of flying machines.

Dallas caught up with the brains at Stanford University to check out the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter – a radio-controlled chopper that can teach itself to fly. Which is pretty useful given that Dallas crashed it after just 30 seconds!

The tech behind it is really impressive. Get an expert to fly it, then all manner of accelerometers, gyroscopes and sensors provide the info to a computer, which then teaches the helicopter to fly.

But that’s enough blathering on, check out Dallas fiddling with the choppers here.