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This article presents a novel framework for performing visual inspection around 3D infrastructures, by establishing a team of fully autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) with robust localization, planning and perception capabilities. The…
In the future, extraterrestrial expeditions will not only be conducted by rovers but also by flying robots. The technical demonstration drone Ingenuity, that just landed on Mars, will mark the beginning of a new era of exploration…
Selecting safe landing sites in non-cooperative environments is a key step towards the full autonomy of UAVs. However, the existing methods have the common problems of poor generalization ability and robustness. Their performance in unknown…
Monocular visual navigation methods have seen significant advances in the last decade, recently producing several real-time solutions for autonomously navigating small unmanned aircraft systems without relying on GPS. This is critical for…
Safe UAV navigation is challenging due to the complex environment structures, dynamic obstacles, and uncertainties from measurement noises and unpredictable moving obstacle behaviors. Although plenty of recent works achieve safe navigation…
Autonomous indoor navigation of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) possesses many challenges. One main reason is that GPS has limited precision in indoor environments. The additional fact that MAVs are not able to carry heavy weight or power…
Multi-rotor aerial autonomous vehicles (MAVs) primarily rely on vision for navigation purposes. However, visual localization and odometry techniques suffer from poor performance in low or direct sunlight, a limited field of view, and…
Micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) have high potential for information gathering tasks to support situation awareness in search and rescue scenarios. Manually controlling MAVs in such scenarios requires experienced pilots and is error-prone,…
The use of multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for search and rescue as well as remote sensing is rapidly increasing. Multi-rotor UAVs, however, have limited endurance. The range of UAV applications can be widened if teams of…
Micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) are strongly limited in their payload and power capacity. In order to implement autonomous navigation, algorithms are therefore desirable that use sensory equipment that is as small, low-weight, and low-power…
Co-design optimisation of autonomous systems has emerged as a powerful alternative to sequential approaches by jointly optimising physical design and control strategies. However, existing frameworks often neglect the robustness required for…
As fully-actuated systems, omnidirectional multirotor aerial vehicles (OMAVs) have more flexible maneuverability and advantages in aggressive flight in cluttered environments than traditional underactuated MAVs. %Due to the high…
Reliable deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in cluttered unknown environments requires accurate sensors for Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-denied localization and obstacle avoidance. Such a requirement limits the usage…
The advances in compact and agile micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) have shown great potential in replacing human for labor-intensive or dangerous indoor investigation, such as warehouse management and fire rescue. However, the design of a state…
Quadrotors are agile. Unlike most other machines, they can traverse extremely complex environments at high speeds. To date, only expert human pilots have been able to fully exploit their capabilities. Autonomous operation with on-board…
Autonomous landing on a moving platform presents unique challenges for multirotor vehicles, including the need to accurately localize the platform, fast trajectory planning, and precise/robust control. Previous works studied this problem…
Monitoring large scale environments is a crucial task for managing remote alpine environments, especially for hazardous events such as avalanches. One key information for avalanche risk forecast is imagery of released avalanches. As these…
Research in the field of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has significantly advanced in recent years, mainly due to their relevance in a large variety of commercial, industrial, and military applications. However, UAV navigation…
Navigating autonomous robots through dense forests and rugged terrains is especially daunting when exteroceptive sensors -- such as cameras and LiDAR sensors -- fail under occlusions, low-light conditions, or sensor noise. We present…
In this paper, we address the challenge of navigating through unknown indoor environments using autonomous aerial robots within confined spaces. The core of our system involves the integration of key sensor technologies, including depth…