Having trounced humans at everything from chess and Go, to StarCraft and Gran Turismo, artificial intelligence (AI) has raised its game and laid waste world champions at a physical sport. The latest mortals to feel the sting of AI-induced defeat are three expert drone racers who were beaten by an algorithm that learned to fly a drone around a 3D race course at breakneck speeds without crashing. Or at least not crashing too often. Developed by researchers at the University of Zurich, the Swift AI won 15 out of 25 races against world champions and clocked the fastest lap on a course where drones reach speeds of 50mph (80km/h) and endure accelerations up to 5g, enough to make many people black out. “Our result marks the first time that a robot powered by AI has beaten a human champion in a real physical sport designed for and by humans,” said Elia Kaufmann, a researcher who helped to develop Swift. First-person view drone racing involves flying a drone around a course dotted with gates that must be passed through cleanly to avoid a crash. The pilots see the course via a video feed from a camera mounted on the drone. Writing in Nature, Kaufmann and his colleagues describe a series of head-to-head races between Swift and three champion drone racers, Thomas Bitmatta, Marvin Schäpper and Alex Vanover. Before the contest, the human pilots had a week to practise on the course, while Swift trained in a simulated environment that contained a virtual replica of the course.
Full story : AI beats champion human pilots in head-to-head drone races.
