美国有线新闻 CNN 利用无人机拯救生命（在线收听）

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.

当然，在本世纪，无人机的用途远远超出了战争，包括监视、探索、摄影和赛车。一名年轻的发明家希望智能无人机能够在危险的地方导航，在寻找幸存者的过程中避开障碍.

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.

我叫盖瑞。今年18岁，是加州斯坦福大学的学生。我正在建造能够在室内空间导航和执行关键任务的无人驾驶飞机，我希望有一天这些无人机能帮助拯救生命。

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，然后利用这种好奇心来构建事物来解决问题。在我14岁的时候，因为建造了一架果蝇火力无人机而获得了谷歌科学博览会的冠军，这架无人机可以帮助急救人员进行某些救援工作。

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?

这一切都始于香蕉。四年前，我的家人去印度度假，当回来的时候，意识到我们在厨房的柜台上放了一些香蕉，那时，香蕉已经开始腐烂，所以房子里满是果蝇。我一直试着打它们，当它们不停地逃跑时，我不停地打它们，非常疯狂，但我也很好奇这些微小的生物，小小的大脑，非常糟糕的视力，它们怎么可能逃得这么快?

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.

果蝇看不太清楚细节，但这意味着它们可以处理看不到的东西并很快做出反应。果蝇拥有地球上最快的视觉系统。它们的视力反应比人类快十倍。

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

与此同时，无人机刚刚开始流行起来，我也意识到它们可能有巨大的潜力去拯救生命。

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，问题是无人机并不擅长对环境做出反应。所以，我想看看是否能从果蝇身上提取这种本能，使它们能够有效地逃脱，使无人机能够很好地应对环境。这就是所谓的生物模拟，所以在生物学中寻找如何设计这些解决复杂工程问题的模型。

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.

实际上，鸟类可以分别从每只眼睛里看到图像，这和我们用单台相机的方式是很相似的。果蝇看边缘。所以，我设计了一种算法，可以利用这两种线索来处理单个摄像机的数据流，并绘制出3D环境的地图，然后用它来避开障碍物。

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，我现在要做的是这个智能无人机平台,它可以用于搜索和救援建筑、工业检查、检查发电厂，所有这些应用，来执行这些非常重要的救生任务。这个想法是，你用这个无人机，根据要完成的任务插入不同的传感器。无人机将利用传感器执行某些任务。

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.

它们可以告诉急救人员地震后被困灾民的位置。它们可以检测桥梁或其他基础设施的锈迹，以防止坍塌。它们可以去核电站，找到辐射的热点然后通知这些东西会泄漏或者这些东西会因为某些原因而泄露。

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.

我的梦想是建造一些能够改善10亿人生活的设备。对我来说，成功就是这些无人机真的是在拯救生命。