DARPA’s new drones show that robots are winning their war against us

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Man is not required.

While most drones require an operator to control them, the ones in DARPA's Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program fly themselves. Although not perfect in its current phase, the program's first flight test exceeded expectations.

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"We're excited that we were able to validate the airspeed goal during this first-flight data collection," said Mark Micire, DARPA program manager. "The fact that some teams also demonstrated basic autonomous flight ahead of schedule was an added bonus. The challenge for the teams now is to advance the algorithms and onboard computational efficiency to extend the UAV's perception range and compensate for the vehicle's' mass to make extremely tight turns and abrupt maneuvers at high speeds."

Advancing algorithms and extending perception range. That's what we thought.

Now watch this video of DARPA's first test flight: