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Swarm of Micro Flying Robots

Project description


Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics
Micro helicopter design, vision-based motion estimation and 3D reconstruction without GPS
In the sFLY project autonomous micro helicopters are about to play major roles in tasks like search and rescue, security surveillance and law enforcement. The ability to fly allows to avoid obstacles on the ground and to have an excellent bird’s eye view. Their navigational and hovering advantages make them the ideal platform for exploration, mapping and monitoring tasks. Fully autonomous operation in cities or other dense environments involves challenges on all levels of helicopter design, perception, actuation, control, navigation and power supply that have yet to be solved. This project will focus on micro helicopter design, visual 3D mapping and navigation, low power communication and multi-robot control under environmental constraints. It will lead to novel micro flying robots that are: inherently safe due to very low weight; capable of vision-based fully autonomous navigation and mapping; capable of coordinated flight in small swarms in constrained and dense environments.

Autonomous micro helicopters are about to play major roles in tasks like reconnaissance for search and rescue, environment monitoring, security surveillance, inspection, law enforcement, etc. The ability to fly allows easily avoiding obstacles on the ground and to have an excellent bird's eye view. Therefore flying robots are the logical heir of ground based mobile robots. Its navigational and hovering advantages make them the ideal platform for exploration, mapping and monitoring tasks. If they are further realized in small scale, they can also be used in narrow out- and indoor environment and they represent only a limited risk for the environment and people living in it. However, for such operations today's systems navigating on GPS information only are not sufficient any more. Fully autonomous operation in cities or other dense environments requires the micro helicopter to fly at low altitude or indoors where GPS signals are often shadowed and to actively explore unknown environments while avoiding collisions and creating maps. This involves a number of challenges on all levels of helicopter design, perception, actuation, control, navigation and power supply that have yet to be solved.Our S and T endeavor proposed in this project will therefore focus on micro helicopter design, visual 3D mapping and navigation, low power communication including range estimation and multi-robot control under environmental constraints. It shall lead to novel micro flying robots that are:• Inherently safe due to very low weight (around 500g) and appropriate propeller design;• capable of vision-based fully autonomous navigation and mapping;• able of coordinated flight in small swarms in constrained and dense environments.

Fields of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

FP7-ICT-2007-3
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

CP - Collaborative project (generic)

Coordinator

EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH
Address
Raemistrasse 101
8092 Zuerich
Switzerland

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
projects.administrative_contact
Roland Siegwart (Prof.)
Links
EU contribution
€ 1 167 235,00

Participants (5)

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Last update: 16 July 2019
Record number: 89454

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