Below is a brief history of the AVATAR project. As well as the timeline, there is also an image archive and a video archive.
 
2006

Demonstration flight at James Reserve in cooperation with the NAMOS project.

Transition from QNX- to Linux-based on-board control software and ground station software.
2005 Demonstration of fully autonomous vision-based obstacle avoidance.
2004 Demonstration of autonomous deployment under autonomous flight.

Demonstration of autonomous localization of deployed Mote network.

Demonstration of autonomous repair of deployed Mote network.
2003 Third generation AVATAR performs first autonomous flight.

Demonstration of autonomous Mote deployment under piloted flight.
2002 During early testing, 3rd generation AVATAR crashes, badly damaging the helicopter, but luckily not the electronics.
2001 Demonstration of autonomous vision-based landing.

Start of construction of 3rd generation AVATAR.
2000 Demonstration of autonomous vision-based following of a moving ground vehicle by the AVATAR.

Demonstration of autonomous DGPS waypoint following using splines (AVATAR flew a figure 8 pattern described by a spline).
1999 Demonstration of deployment and recovery of a marsupial robot (small, teleoped RC car with wireless video feed onboard) by AVATAR.
1998 Demonstration of multi-robot (air and ground) cooperation using the AVATAR and 2 Pioneer AT Robots.
1997 Second generation AVATAR (Autonomous Vehicle Aerial Tracking And Reconnaissance)
1994 AFV wins the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's Aerial Robotics Competition.

First generation AVATAR (Autonomous Vehicle Aerial Tracking And Retrieval)
1993 AFV enters AUVS IARC for second time.
1992 AFV enters AUVS IARC for first time.
1991 Project initiated.

First flying robot AFV (Autonomous Flying Vehicle)
 
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Last modified: May 23 2006