Autonomous quadcopter powered by smartphone

An autonomous quadcopter that can navigate through a room on its own using just the power of a smartphone has been developed.
It does not need any human interference, and in contrast to other models, the quadcopter is not assisted by any external computer. All the necessary computing power in on board; the image processing is done by a standard smartphone.
The Virtual-Reality-Team at Vienna University of Technology has been working with visual data for many years.
Usually, quadcopters are steered by humans or they send their data to a powerful earthbound computer, which then returns the necessary control signals. The Vienna quadcopter, however, does not need any external input.

The team assembled a simple, cost-efficient quadcopter, using carefully selected components.
The core element - and the most expensive part of the quadcopter - is a smartphone. Its camera provides the visual data and its processor acts as the control center.

The quadcopter's intelligence, which allows it to navigate, was coded in a smartphone-app. In addition, a micro controller adjusts the rotor speed, so that the quadcopter flies as steadily as possible.
The quadcopter was designed to work indoors, even in small rooms. This is a major challenge; especially close to walls or corners, aerodynamics can be much more tricky than in open space. Apart from that, the quadcopter cannot make any use of GPS data, it has to rely entirely on visual data.

To test the quadcopters navigational capabilities, the team attached visual codes to the floor, similar to QR-codes. Hovering above these codes, the quadcopter recognises them, obtains information and creates a map of its environment.
Once it has created a virtual map of the codes on the floor, it can head for a specific known location or go on exploring areas it has not yet checked out.
There are many possible applications for an autonomous quadcopter, firemen could send it into a burning building and have it transmit a 3D picture from inside before they enter the building themselves, researchers said.

Miniature quadcopters could guide people to the right place in large, labyrinthine buildings. Due to its low price, the smartphone-quadcopter could also be used in less wealthy regions of the world - for instance to monitor illegal forest clearance without having to use expensive helicopters, they said.