MIT's tiny flying robot gets 450% faster with AI MIT's tiny AI-powered flying robot can now move almost like an insect, performing rapid turns and 10 flips in just 11 seconds.
Date: September 22, 2026 Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Summary: A new AI control system lets MIT's tiny flying robot move with insect-like agility, boosting its speed by about 450 percent and allowing it to pull off 10 somersaults in 11 seconds. The technology could eventually enable miniature robots to search earthquake rubble and navigate dangerous spaces that conventional drones cannot reach.
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We designed a replacement for an old high-voltage pulse amplfier, an EG&G SG-489...
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Jeroen Belleman
This thing was thethered to an off-board power source and control system. Now they 'just' have to integrate all that too and off they go.
They could have told us so in the Science Daily blurb, but they didn't.
Jeroen Belleman
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Jan Panteltje
Yes, was wondering how they did it.
But still being able to fly in a very small space without hitting the walls is amazing! Their software could be used in bigger thing too.
I was reading CERN is taking their stuff apart and replacing the magnets with ever more powerful ones?
Do they still believe running 2 Tesla cars at supersonic speed against each other will make them understand its microchips ?
Was recently reading about all those particles' they have so far 'discovered' Lost overview at some point. Feels like crap.
Back to the desktop experiments and away with mathematical babble swamp.
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john larkin
Science Daily is always amusing. Like Popular Mechanics.
John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics
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Jeroen Belleman
They don't say if it flew into the wall or not. They *do* say that the actual trajectory wiggles randomly and rapidly around the desired path. I'd hate to fly in an airplane doing that.
They have a freely accessible paper explaining all this in detail:
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Yes, the LHC is being upgraded to become the "High Luminosity LHC". This involves increasing the intensity of the beams and tweaking the beam optics around the experiments. And much more...
A lot of magnets in the vicinity of the crossing points need to be replaced, all machines need to be adapted to handling more protons per shot, and not least, all experiments will need upgrades of the acquisition electronics to deal with the increased event rate.
Anyway, lots of stuff needed replacement anyway, because of several years of accumulated radiation damage, or simply because of having become obsolete.
The objective is to better pin down the properties of the Higgs and hopefully to discover some new physics. The LHC disappointed a lot of physicists. Apart from the expected Higgs, no notable other discoveries were made, although physicists closely involved in the LHC experiments will probably disagree with me on that point.
As for your analogy, you can't take protons apart with spanners and screwdrivers, and they don't have OBD ports.
Jeroen Belleman
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