Abstract
Recent progress in sensor technology, data processing and integrated actuators has made the development of miniature flying robots fully possible. Micro VTOL1 systems represent a useful class of flying robots because of their strong capabilities for small-area monitoring, building exploration and intervention in hostile environments. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of the VTOL vehicle as a candidate for the high-mobility system emergence. In addition, we describe the approach that our lab2 has taken to micro VTOL evolving towards autonomy and present the mechanical design, dynamic modelling, sensing, and control of our indoor VTOL autonomous robot OS4.3
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Samir Bouabdallah is research assistant and Ph.D. student at the Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, (EPFL). He got his Masters in Electrical Engineer from Abu Bakr Belkaid University (ABBU) Tlemcen, Algeria in 2001. His master thesis was the development of an autonomous mobile robot for academic research. His current research interests are control systems and design optimization of VTOL flying robots.
Pierpaolo Murrieri is a Ph.D. student at the “Centro Interdipartimentale E. Piaggio” and “Dipartimento Sistemi Elettrici ed Automazione” (DSEA) at the University of Pisa. He got his Master in Electrical Engineer from University of Pisa in 2000. His master thesis was about the registration of biomedical images. His current research interests are mobile robotics, nonlinear control and artificial vision.
Roland Siegwart is director of the Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He received his Masters in Mechanical Engineering in 1983 and his Ph.D. in 1989 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH). In 1989/90 he spent one year as postdoc at Stanford University. From 1991 to 1996 he worked part time as R&D director at MECOS Traxler AG and as a lecturer and deputy head at the Institute of Robotics, ETH. In 1996 he joined EPFL as full professor where he is working in robotics and mechatronics, namely mobile robot navigation, space robotics, human-robot interaction, all terrain locomotion and micro-robotics. Roland Siegwart is member of various scientific committees and cofounder of several spin-off companies.
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Bouabdallah, S., Murrieri, P. & Siegwart, R. Towards Autonomous Indoor Micro VTOL. Auton Robot 18, 171–183 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-005-0724-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-005-0724-z