Kinect Used To Control Self-Aware Flying Machine! [Video.]

Goddammit! Haven’t we learned anything. I was pretty sure that all this fucking around we’re doing with the Kinect is going to bring about the robot apocalypse. And now I’m getting more sure. The mad scientists over at the Hybrid Systems Lab at UC Berkeley have used the Kinect to construct an autonomous flying machine.

Kotaku:

Instead of being hooked up to an Xbox 360 to play games, Kinect is sending visual data to a Linux box onboard the mini-copter, letting the quadrotor fly autonomously, detect its own altitude and avoid obstacles. A back-up motion capture device provides other data–lateral and yaw–and provides a safety back up for altitude detection, should Kinect fail at some point.

It seems cool now, but when they’re used to fly over cities and drop nuclear caches, we’re going to be seriously displeased with these guys.

Hit the jump for the video of it flying. It’s amazing. And terrifying.