A group of MIT researchers recently completed a series of test
flights, navigating an airplane that operates without human
control or an onboard GPS navigation system through a close-
quarters course in a parking garage. The plane looks like a
model airplane, but it has advanced technology in its guts that
can be seen sticking out behind the nose. The two-meter wingspan
is just shy of some spaces in the parking garage where it was
tested. The tracking technology developed in the project is
available to the public. One possible re-use of the technology
is to track construction workers in dangerous situations where
GPS is not available. "The vehicle is localizing against a 3D
map," says Abraham Bachrach, an electrical engineering grad
student at MIT. "It fuses information from inertial sensors and
a 2D LiDAR carried onboard to estimate its state. All
computation is done onboard the vehicle, but it sends its
position back to the base station over WiFi so that we can
monitor it." The technological advance demonstr