IlliGAL Blogging

The New Mexico State University Roundup reports that members of the RioRoboLab showed a tethered helicopter during visitors day:

RioRoboLab director Ram Prasad said work on the autonomous helicopter began last semester as a Capstone Design effort under sponsorship of the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range. A Capstone Design is an academic requirement for all graduating engineering students. Prasad said although helicopters are the most maneuverable aircraft, they are the most difficult to control when trying to provide stable flight characteristics. The objective is to implement technologies that are bio-inspired and can emulate human behavior to fly the helicopter. In response, students in the RioRoboLab have worked toward developing control systems to allow a model helicopter to attain autonomous flight.

Whether or not genetic algorithms or evolutionary computation were part of the demo is unclear from the article; however, the lab is a part of a larger Rio Grande Soft Computing Institute. The mission of the institute is "to develop and facilitate the application of innovative soft computing technologies for modeling, analysis, prototyping, manufacturing, testing and evaluation of dynamic processes and systems that have use in government and in industry."