On yer bike! Boffins teach AI drone to fly itself using cams on bicycles, self-driving car

Vid Researchers have taught a drone to fly autonomously through the streets of Zürich, Switzerland, by using a simple neural network. As tech companies toy with the idea of using mini-drones for delivery, monitoring buildings, or surveillance, then figuring out how to fly them without human control is vital if sales are to scale up. A paper published in the IEEE Robotics and Automation journal (here's a free pre-print version) shows how AI can help make that process easier. Known as DroNet, the convolutional neural network has eight layers and is much smaller and less complex than other architectures. It works by examining images from a camera, and produces two outputs: a steering angle so it can hover and skirt around obstacles, and a collision probability so it knows whether or not it's likely to bump into stuff, and take appropriate action.