The autonomous drone beat human drone races in competition and recorded the fastest lap time. (Image Credit: UZH Robotics and Perception Group/YouTube)
It looks like artificial intelligence is starting to beat us at everything. So far, it's claimed victory in video games, chess, and Go. Now Swift, an AI-powered drone built by the University of Zurich, has defeated three world-champion drone pilots. The autonomous drone won first place in 15/25 races while also managing to achieve the fastest lap time. Thomas Bitmatta, Alex Vanover, and Marvin Schaepper were the three drone racing champions who raced against the AI drone.
Human drone pilots wear headsets that connect to a camera on the drone to navigate around obstacles at high speeds to complete the race in the fastest time possible with minimal damage. These drones typically reach top speeds of 50 mph during those races. Swift came out on top in 15 of 25 races against the humans and finished in 17.47 seconds, the best lap time. That new record beat the previous human pilot one by almost half a second.
For this competition, the human pilots needed to learn the course and train for the race in just one week. Meanwhile, Swift trained in a simulation designed to replicate the race course. The AI drone relied on deep reinforcement learning and other data to complete the simulation.
Swift uses video recorded by its cameras to detect gates in the racing course. (Image Credit: UZH Robotics and Perception Group/YouTube)
While racing, Swift's camera captured video of the course before sending it over to a neural network that identified gates for the drone to fly through. Sensors equipped on the drone helped it with speed, orientation, and positioning. Every process involved here was performed autonomously while the drone flew at high speeds.
The team also discovered Swift navigated the course differently compared to the human pilots. For instance, it flew more consistently and took tighter turns. And those tight turns gave Swift an advantage during the race because it took fractions of a second off the lap times. The drone even impressed the human champions. "That was insane," Bitmatta yelled out during a race against Swift. "The possibilities are endless; this is the start of something that could change the whole world," Bitmatta wrote in the research paper.
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