We’ve all seen those really cool helicopter type UAVs in videos that show them flying around obstacles both indoor and outdoor but the Robust Robotics Group at MIT decided to up the ante and develop a fixed wing UAV that can maneuver indoors autonomously.

“The reason that we switched from the helicopter to the fixed-wing vehicle is that the fixed-wing vehicle is a more complicated and interesting problem, but also that it has a much longer flight time,” said Nick Roy, head of the Robust Robotics Group. “The helicopter is working very hard just to keep itself in the air, and we wanted to be able to fly longer distances for longer periods of time.”

via GizMag

Of course being fixed-winged has its own problems that it needs to deal with, like being able to maintain a minimum speed so that it doesn’t stall out. As well it needs not only sense its environment and plan a safe route it also has to make sure those routes are ‘dynamically feasible’.

The following video shows the UAV flying through a multi-story parking garage.