Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could help the military carry out surveillance in unknown territory or first responders look for survivors after a disaster. The trick is making them agile enough to pull off daredevil aerobatic maneuvers.

Daniel Mellinger, Nathan Michael and Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Laboratory have developed software that lets a small, quadroter helicopter perform aggressive acrobatic stunts autonomously. They show off the impressive maneuvers--including a quadroter that autonomously maneuvers quickly through a tight space--in a new video, below.

The researchers plan to present the results of their work at the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) conference in December in India.

We found out in June that the stealth robotics company created by iRobot founder Helen Greiner would work on unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) for emergency response. Now the company has revealed that these UAVs will also be used to inspect bridges, dams and other infrastructure.

Formerly known as The Droid Works, and now called CyPhy Works, the company has received a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Technology Innovation Program (TIP) grant of $2.4 million. CyPhy Works will work with researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology to develop small, hovering UAVs equipped with video cameras and sensors.

According to a press release from the company:

If successful, the project will produce an advanced class of UAVs that would enable entirely novel, efficient, and relatively low-cost techniques for monitoring the health of the nation's existing civil infrastructure.

While many researchers are working on small, hovering robots for search-and-rescue, surveillance, and structure monitoring, controlling and coordinating these aircraft remains a challenge. Many UAV projects currently use GPS to navigate, but this is not very precise and does not work inside buildings.

CyPhy Works apparently plans to develop a more precise navigation system. It has plans for two types of monitoring: Robotic Assisted Inspection, where a UAV slowly flies along a structure taking high resolution images, and Autonomous Robotic Monitoring, where a UAV stays at a structure and routinely checks for potential dangerous changes on its own. It will be interesting to see if the company can make the latter approach work, and what techniques it develops for stabilizing the UAVs in high wind.

We finally have a hint of what The Droid Works, a stealthy-mode start-up founded by Helen Grenier, one of the cofounders of iRobot, will develop.

The NSF has given The Droid Works a grant worth nearly $100,000 to develop indoor and outdoor unmanned air vehicles. According to the report, the UAVs will be used for emergency response:

Indoor applications would enable the UAVs to respond to emergency situations that involve large steps, closed doors and rough terrain. The NSF grant will be used to develop indoor flight control and safety technology for the UAVs.

Other researchers are developing UAVs and other robots to assist with a rescue or survey an area following a disaster. Robin Murphy, a professor of computer science at Texas A&M University, is leading one effort to use snake-like robots to rescue people trapped beneath rubble. More recently she developed a way to use multiply UAVs to survey an area and locate survivors.