MORE THAN A HAT TRICK
Something really cool is afoot in the world of flying drones, a subject close to my heart for some time (see 
earlier posts here and here).
Engadget reports on a story from Boston.com that lays it out:
"Creating a robot that can manage to fly around a room on its own without hitting a wall is a mean feat to pull off, but that's exactly what a team of professors at MIT have managed to do. Their multiple-UAV test platform is capable of complex tasks like following moving ground-based objects with little or no direct control from a human."
This is not just about cool toys, but an emerging, substantial market. As the Boston.com article explains:
"Teal Group , an aerospace and defense market-analysis firm in Fairfax, Va., recently projected that worldwide spending on unmanned aerial vehicles and related systems will represent a $55 billion worldwide market over the next 10 years. Annual spending on flying drone systems could triple, to $8.3 billion in 2016 from $2.7 billion now."
It's not easy stuff. What's required at a minimum is the following:
"To test and debug a multiple-vehicle flying system outdoors normally requires four people monitoring every vehicle, How said, or potentially over three dozen people to run a test of 10 flying drones. "That is logistically hard, and very costly," he said.
With the MIT system, not only can one person handle several flying devices at once, "You can have a student essentially operate this from their bedroom," through a high-speed Internet connection."
Very cool stuff. Very reminiscent of how manned flight got started by Orville and Wilbur Wright over a century ago: with the help of the US military, as this Wikipedia entry reminds us:
"Orville followed his brother's success by demonstrating another nearly identical flyer to the United States Army at Fort Myer, Virginia, starting on September 3, 1908. On September 9 he made the first hour-long flight."
History does tend to repeat itself after all.
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