Technology

If you’re a rock climber, hiker, runner, dancer, or anyone who likes recording themselves while in motion, a personal drone companion can now do all the filming for you — completely autonomously. Skydio MIT  alumni, is commercializing an autonomous video-capturing drone — dubbed by some as the “selfie drone” — that tracks and films a subject, while freely navigating any environment. , a San Francisco-based startup founded by three Called R1, the drone is equipped with 13 cameras that capture omnidirectional video. It launches and lands through an app — or by itself. On the app, the R1 can also be preset to certain filming and flying conditions or be controlled manually. The concept for the R1 started taking shape almost a decade ago at MIT, where the co-founders — Adam Bry SM ’12, Abraham Bacharach PhD ’12, and Matt Donahoe SM ’11 — first met and worked on advanced, prize-winning autonomous drones. Skydio launched in 2014 and is releasing the R1 to consumers this week. ...

Engineers have developed decision-making and motion-planning technology to limit injuries and damage when self-driving vehicles are involved in unavoidable crashes. After recognizing that a collision of some kind is inevitable, the system works by analyzing all available options and choosing the course of action with the least serious outcome. “What can we do in order to minimize the consequences?” said Amir Khajepour, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering at the  University of Waterloo . “That is our focus.” The first rule for the autonomous vehicle (AV) crash-mitigation technology is avoiding collisions with pedestrians. From there, it weighs factors such as relative speeds, angles of collision and differences in mass and vehicle type to determine the best possible maneuver, such as braking or steering in one direction or another. “We consider the whole traffic environment perceived by the autonomous vehicle, including all the other vehicles and obsta...