Researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, have used a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to manufacture a ‘quadrocopter’ flying robot that can navigate around obstacles in real time, thanks to a new type of 3-D vision.

The university says that this could lead to flying rescue robots that do not need humans to control them. A spokesman said: “These robots would be able to make their own way in collapsed buildings or caves.”

The flying robot was designed by Professor Ashton Saxena and his team, which attached video cameras to a quadrocopter to give it a sense of its surroundings.

The Cornell spokesman added: “They then turned to modifications with software that had been developed by the professor and used 2-D images to ‘paint’ a 3-D map of the robot’s surroundings.

The flying robot was then able to break the map into ‘chunks’ that were easier to process and find a pathway that allowed it to arrive at its destination without it crashing into things along the way.”