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Sound Navigation: Enabling Tiny Robots to Find Their Way Through Smoke, Dust, and Darkness — NSF Award to Worcester Polytechnic In

This award will support fundamental research to enable aerial robots smaller than 100 millimeters and weighing less than 100 grams to navigate through cluttered surroundings in the presence of smoke, darkness, dust, fog, and snow. To accomplish this in a completely self-contained way, the robots in this project will us

Award titleSound Navigation: Enabling Tiny Robots to Find Their Way Through Smoke, Dust, and Darkness
Award ID2516439
AwardeeWorcester Polytechnic Institute
CityWORCESTER
StateMA
Amount obligated$704,908
Principal investigatorNitin Sanket
ProgramFRR-Foundationl Rsrch Robotics, Special Initiatives
Start date09/01/2025
AbstractThis award will support fundamental research to enable aerial robots smaller than 100 millimeters and weighing less than 100 grams to navigate through cluttered surroundings in the presence of smoke, darkness, dust, fog, and snow. To accomplish this in a completely self-contained way, the robots in this project will use sound waves instead of light to sense nearby objects. Sound waves penetrate much farther than light through airborne particles, but are easily confused by propellor noise and are
SourceNSF Awards

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