CNN News: 利用無人機拯救生命

Of course, in this century, uses for drones go far beyond war, to include surveillance, exploration, photography, racing. And one young inventor is hoping that smart drones will be able to navigate dangerous places, avoiding obstacles while searching for survivors.

然，在本世紀(jì)，無人機的用途遠遠超出了戰(zhàn)爭，包括監(jiān)視、探索、攝影和賽車。一名年輕的發(fā)明家希望智能無人機能夠在危險的地方導(dǎo)航，在尋找幸存者的過程中避開障礙.

MIHIR GARIMELLA, INVENTOR: I’m Mihir Garimella. I’m 18 years old and I’m a student at Stanford University in California. I’m building autonomous drones that can navigate and carry out critical missions in indoors spaces and I hope one day these drones can help save lives.

我叫蓋瑞。今年18歲，是加州斯坦福大學(xué)的學(xué)生。我正在建造能夠在室內(nèi)空間導(dǎo)航和執(zhí)行關(guān)鍵任務(wù)的無人駕駛飛機，我希望有一天這些無人機能幫助拯救生命。

I’ve always been curious about how things work and then sort of using that curiosity to actually build things to solve problems. When I was 14, I won the Google Science Fair for building a fruit flies fire drone that can help first responders carry out certain rescues.

我一直很好奇事物是如何工作的，然后利用這種好奇心來構(gòu)建事物來解決問題。在我14歲的時候，因為建造了一架果蠅火力無人機而獲得了谷歌科學(xué)博覽會的冠軍，這架無人機可以幫助急救人員進行某些救援工作。

It all started with bananas. Four years ago, my family went to India on vacation and when we got back, we realize that we left some bananas on the kitchen counter and by that point, they’re rotting so our house is filled with fruit flies. I kept trying to swat them, kept hitting really mad when they kept escaping, but I also came curious how these tiny organisms, tiny brain, really bad eyesight, how could they possibly escape so effectively?

這一切都始于香蕉。四年前，我的家人去印度度假，當(dāng)回來的時候，意識到我們在廚房的柜臺上放了一些香蕉，那時，香蕉已經(jīng)開始腐爛，所以房子里滿是果蠅。我一直試著打它們，當(dāng)它們不停地逃跑時，我不停地打它們，非常瘋狂，但我也很好奇這些微小的生物，小小的大腦，非常糟糕的視力，它們怎么可能逃得這么快?

So, fruit flies can’t see in very much detail, but that means that they can process what they can’t see and respond to that really quickly. Fruit flies actually have the fastest visual system on the planet. They can see ten times faster than humans can.

果蠅看不太清楚細節(jié)，但這意味著它們可以處理看不到的東西并很快做出反應(yīng)。果蠅擁有地球上最快的視覺系統(tǒng)。它們的視力反應(yīng)比人類快十倍。

On the same time drones were just starting to become popular, I also realize that they could have tremendous potential to actually save lives.

與此同時，無人機剛剛開始流行起來，我也意識到它們可能有巨大的潛力去拯救生命。

So, the problem is that they aren’t really good at reacting to their environments. And so, I wanted to see whether we could draw this instinct from the fruit fly that enables them to escape so effectively, to make drones good at responding to their environments. And this is something called bio mimicry, so looking to biology for models on how to design these solutions to really complex engineering problems.

所以，問題是無人機并不擅長對環(huán)境做出反應(yīng)。所以，我想看看是否能從果蠅身上提取這種本能，使它們能夠有效地逃脫，使無人機能夠很好地應(yīng)對環(huán)境。這就是所謂的生物模擬，所以在生物學(xué)中尋找如何設(shè)計這些解決復(fù)雜工程問題的模型。

Birds actually see using the images from each eye separately, and so, that’s similar to how we want to do this with a single camera. Fruit fly see in terms of edges. And so, I designed an algorithm that could sort of use both of those cues to process a stream from a single camera and make a map of a 3D environment that it could then use to avoid obstacles.

實際上，鳥類可以分別從每只眼睛里看到圖像，這和我們用單臺相機的方式是很相似的。果蠅看邊緣。所以，我設(shè)計了一種算法，可以利用這兩種線索來處理單個攝像機的數(shù)據(jù)流，并繪制出3D環(huán)境的地圖，然后用它來避開障礙物。

So, what I’m trying to build now is this intelligence drone platform that can be used for a search and rescue construction, industrial inspection, you know, inspecting power plants, all these applications, to sort of carry out these really critical lifesaving missions. So, the idea is that you take this drone, plug in different sensors based on whatever tasks you’re trying to accomplish. And the drone would use the sensors to carry out certain missions.

所以，我現(xiàn)在要做的是這個智能無人機平臺,它可以用于搜索和救援建筑、工業(yè)檢查、檢查發(fā)電廠，所有這些應(yīng)用，來執(zhí)行這些非常重要的救生任務(wù)。這個想法是，你用這個無人機，根據(jù)要完成的任務(wù)插入不同的傳感器。無人機將利用傳感器執(zhí)行某些任務(wù)。

They can tell first responders the locations of trapped victims after an earthquake. They can detect rusts in bridges or other infrastructures to prevent collapse. They could go on to nuclear power plant, pinpoint hot spots of radiation and say, you know, these things are going to leak or these things are leaking because of these reasons.

它們可以告訴急救人員地震后被困災(zāi)民的位置。它們可以檢測橋梁或其他基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施的銹跡，以防止坍塌。它們可以去核電站，找到輻射的熱點然后通知這些東西會泄漏或者這些東西會因為某些原因而泄露。

My dream is build something that can improve the lives of a billion people. Success for me is these drones, you know, are really saving lives.

我的夢想是建造一些能夠改善10億人生活的設(shè)備。對我來說，成功就是這些無人機真的是在拯救生命。