alt Hacker News> Traditional stereo won't help you localize them [...] and LIDAR sacrifices resolution for weight and power consumption
I wonder if a more mechanical solution wouldn't help:
Whiskers, like on a cat. A long enough set of thin lightweight whiskers could touch the wire before the propellers do, giving time for the drone to stop and change course. Essentially, giving the drone a sense of touch.
Replies
ianferrel • today at 12:17 AM
Thin lightweight whiskers are going to be challenging to manage on a propeller-driven vehicle. They'll get blown all over the place. Having them extend out past the propellers will likely get them tangled in the propellers.
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cromka • yesterday at 11:59 PM
Would help avoid damage with other misrecognized or ignired objects, too.
As an undergrad I worked with a professor who was doing precisely that! https://sense-lab.github.io/pubs/pdf/solomon_nature_2006.pdf
I hadn't thought about this in a long time. Looks like her lab is still going strong doing research at the intersection of biology and robotics on whisker-based sensing:
https://sense-lab.github.io/robotics.html
https://sense-lab.github.io/publications.html