Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Multi-robot research is conducted by the group by exploiting Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV - quadrotors and octorotors) as experimental testbeds for implementing and evaluating advanced complex strategies for multi-robot estimation and control, with a particular focus on decentralized solutions. The UAVs used by the group are based on a commercial product from the German company MikroKopter, and have been then modified both in their hardware and control software to suit our particular needs. Absolute position/orientation measurements are obtained form an external tracking system (VICON), although several quantities are also estimated onboard exploiting accelerometers, gyroscopes, onboard cameras and RGB-D sensors. Some UAVs are retrofitted with Hardkernel Odroid XU or Zotac Jetson TK1 boards, which support a complete Linux operative system and some graphic acceleration capabilities, in order to provide more computational power and more autonomy to the robots.