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King, Andrew J. (author), Portugal, Steven J. (author), Strömbom, Daniel (author), Mann, Richard P. (author), Carrillo, José A. (author), Kalise, Dante (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author), Barnett, Heather (author), Scerri, Paul (author)A single sheepdog can bring together and manoeuvre hundreds of sheep from one location to another. Engineers and ecologists are fascinated by this sheepdog herding because of the potential it provides for ‘bio-herding’: a biologically inspired herding of animal groups by robots. Although many herding algorithms have been proposed, most are...journal article 2023
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de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author), Hönig, W. (author), Theraulaz, G. (author), Vásárhelyi, G. (author)The idea of preparing a special issue of the Swarm Intelligence journal dedicated to the distributed control and adaptive collective behavior in swarms of drones has emerged after a workshop on this topic held in Toulouse on November 13–14, 2017. This workshop was intended to promote an interdisciplinary approach of collective behavior both in...contribution to periodical 2023
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Harvey, Christina (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author), Taylor, Graham K. (author), Bomphrey, Richard J. (author)Powered flight was once a capability limited only to animals, but by identifying useful attributes of animal flight and building on these with technological advances, engineers have pushed the frontiers of flight beyond our predecessors’ wildest imaginations. Yet, there remain many key characteristics of biological flight that elude current...journal article 2023
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Stroobants, S. (author), Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)ompelling evidence has been given for the high energy efficiency and update rates of neuromorphic processors, with performance beyond what standard Von Neumann architectures can achieve. Such promising features could be advantageous in critical embedded systems, especially in robotics. To date, the constraints inherent in robots (e.g., size and...journal article 2022
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Li, S. (author), de Wagter, C. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)Wireless ranging measurements have been proposed for enabling multiple Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) to localize with respect to each other. However, the high-dimensional relative states are weakly observable due to the scalar distance measurement. Hence, the MAVs have degraded relative localization and control performance under unobservable...journal article 2022
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de Jong, D.B. (author), Paredes-Vallés, Federico (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)End-to-end trained convolutional neural networks have led to a breakthrough in optical flow estimation. The most recent advances focus on improving the optical flow estimation by improving the architecture and setting a new benchmark on the publicly available MPI-Sintel dataset. Instead, in this article, we investigate how deep neural...journal article 2022
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Olejnik, D.A. (author), Muijres, Florian T. (author), Karasek, M. (author), Honfi Camilo, Leonardo (author), de Wagter, C. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)Natural fliers utilize passive and active flight control strategies to cope with windy conditions. This capability makes them incredibly agile and resistant to wind gusts. Here, we study how insects achieve this, by combining Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analyses of flying fruit flies with freely-flying robotic experiments. The CFD...journal article 2022
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de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author), Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (author), Fuller, S. B. (author), Marshall, J. A.R. (author)Autonomous robots are expected to perform a wide range of sophisticated tasks in complex, unknown environments. However, available onboard computing capabilities and algorithms represent a considerable obstacle to reaching higher levels of autonomy, especially as robots get smaller and the end of Moore's law approaches. Here, we argue that...review 2022
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Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (author), Dinaux, Raoul (author), Wessendorp, Nikhil (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)In this paper, we introduce the Obstacle Detection and Avoidance (ODA) Dataset for Drones, aiming at providing raw data obtained in a real indoor environment with sensors adapted for aerial robotics in the context of obstacle detection and avoidance. Our micro air vehicle (MAV) is equipped with the following sensors: (i) an event-based camera...conference paper 2022
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Ma, Z. (author), Smeur, E.J.J. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)Tailsitters have complex aerodynamics that make them hard to control throughout the entire flight envelope, especially at very high angle of attack (AoA) and reverse flow conditions. The development of controllers for these vehicles is hampered by the absence of publicly available data on forces and moments experienced in such conditions. In...journal article 2022
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Olejnik, D.A. (author), Wang, S. (author), Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (author), Stroobants, S. (author), Karasek, M. (author), de Wagter, C. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)This paper discusses a low-cost, open-source and open-hardware design and performance evaluation of a low-speed, multi-fan wind system dedicated to micro air vehicle (MAV) testing. In addition, a set of experiments with a flapping wing MAV and rotorcraft is presented, demonstrating the capabilities of the system and the properties of these...conference paper 2022
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Gonzalez Alvarez, M. (author), Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (author), Corradi, Federico (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)Robotic airships offer significant advantages in terms of safety, mobility, and extended flight times. However, their highly restrictive weight constraints pose a major challenge regarding the available computational resources to perform the required control tasks. Neuromorphic computing stands for a promising research direction for addressing...conference paper 2022
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Li, S. (author), de Wagter, C. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)Relative localization is an important ability for multiple robots to perform cooperative tasks in GPS-denied environments. This paper presents a novel autonomous positioning framework for monocular relative localization of multiple tiny flying robots. This approach does not require any groundtruth data from external systems or manual labeling....conference paper 2022
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Wang, S. (author), Olejnik, D.A. (author), de Wagter, C. (author), van Oudheusden, B.W. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author), Hamaza, S. (author)Flyers in nature equip different airflow sensing mechanisms to navigate through wind disturbances with remarkable flight stability. Embracing bio-inspiration, airflow sensing with conventional sensors has long been utilized in flight control for larger micro air vehicles (MAVs). Bio-inspired flapping wing MAVs (FWMAVs) have extremely limited...journal article 2022
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Westenberger, Jelle (author), de Wagter, C. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)Time-optimal model predictive control is important for achieving fast racing drones but is computationally intensive and thereby rarely used onboard small quadcopters with limited computational resources. In this work, we simplify the optimal control problem (OCP) of the position loop for several maneuvers by exploiting the fact that the...journal article 2022
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Stroobants, S. (author), Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)The great promises of neuromorphic sensing and processing for robotics have led researchers and engineers to investigate novel models for robust and reliable control of autonomous robots (navigation, obstacle detection and avoidance, etc.), especially for quadrotors in challenging contexts such as drone racing and aggressive maneuvers. Using...conference paper 2022
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de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author), Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (author), de Wagter, C. (author), Chatterjee, A. (author), Olejnik, D.A. (author), Ruffier, Franck (author)Attitude control is an essential flight capability. Whereas flying robots commonly rely on accelerometers<sup>1</sup> for estimating attitude, flying insects lack an unambiguous sense of gravity<sup>2,3</sup>. Despite the established role of several sense organs in attitude stabilization<sup>3–5</sup>, the dependence of flying insects on an...journal article 2022
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Mancinelli, A. (author), Smeur, E.J.J. (author), Remes, B.D.W. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)In the last few decades, the UAV research has been focusing on hybrid vehicles with Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) capabilities. Opposed to copters, hybrid vehicles are highly influenced by wind disturbances. This paper presents a novel quad-plane design that uses four dual-axis tilting rotors to enhance the wind rejection capability of...conference paper 2022
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Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (author), Stroobants, S. (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author)The third generation of artificial intelligence (AI) introduced by neuromorphic computing is revolutionizing the way robots and autonomous systems can sense the world, process the information, and interact with their environment. Research towards fulfilling the promises of high flexibility, energy efficiency, and robustness of neuromorphic...conference paper 2022
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Neuman, Sabrina M. (author), Plancher, Brian (author), Duisterhof, Bardienus P. (author), Krishnan, Srivatsan (author), Banbury, Colby (author), Mazumder, Mark (author), Prakash, Shvetank (author), Jabbour, Jason (author), Faust, Aleksandra (author), de Croon, G.C.H.E. (author), Reddi, Vijay Janapa (author)Machine learning (ML) has become a pervasive tool across computing systems. An emerging application that stress-tests the challenges of ML system design is tiny robot learning, the deployment of ML on resource-constrained low-cost autonomous robots. Tiny robot learning lies at the intersection of embedded systems, robotics, and ML, compounding...conference paper 2022