The photos and videos above are of a Lisp-powered autonomous aerial vehicle. My friend Will is at NASA Ames working on the Apex “autonomy architecture”, which is the particular Lisp software in control of this particular minicopter (the Apex website has more photos and videos of it in action).
The Yamaha helicopter is equipped with differential GPS with centimeter accuracy, has a one hour hover duration with a 65 lb. payload and 200 kbps data rates over radio with a 20 mile range--I know at least one thing I want for Christmas.
Just in case I don't get that, at least I can download the Apex software for free.
I find it pleasing that Apex includes a Procedure Description Language which has at least some superficial similarities to the RAP language I've mentioned before:
(procedure (index (turn-on-headlights) (step s1 (clear-hand left-hand)) (step s2 (determine-location headlight-ctl => ?loc) (step s3 (grasp knob left-hand ?loc) (waitfor ?s1 ?s2)) (step s4 (pull knob left-hand 0.4) (waitfor ?s3)) (step s5 (ungrasp left-hand) (waitfor ?s4)) (step s6 (terminate) (waitfor ?s5)))Posted by jjwiseman at December 08, 2004 08:03 PM