A Centralised Approach to Aerial Manipulation on Overhanging Surfaces

Aerial physical interaction opens the door for many operations at height to be automatised using aerial robots. This research presents a novel manipulator design mounted on a traditional quadrotor, which utilises both mechanical and software compliance to perform physical interaction on vertical walls and overhanging surfaces, such as those...

BEAVIS: Balloon Enabled Aerial Vehicle for IoT and Sensing

UAVs are becoming versatile and valuable platforms for various applications. However, the main limitation is their flying time. We present BEAVIS, a novel aerial robotic platform striking an unparalleled trade-off between the maneuverability of drones and the long-lasting capacity of blimps. BEAVIS scores highly in applications where drones...

DroneVLC: Exploiting Drones and VLC to Gather Data from Batteryless Sensors

We explore a new alternative for drones to gather information from sensors. Instead of using the traditional radio-frequency spectrum, whose broadcast nature makes it more difficult to poll specific objects, we utilize the light spectrum. In our system, the drone carries a light, and flies to an area that it is interested in polling. Only the...

Towards landing a deep-stalled flying-wing in a powered flat spin: a proof of concept

Flying-wings show great potential for a vast number of applications, in both commercial and military sectors, thanks to their long range and fast forward flight, but suffer due to their lack of vertical take-off and landing capabilities. This paper presents a proof of concept for a novel landing method for a conventional flying wing that does...

Adoptable Coastal Remote Sensing Using Wave-field Observations: Instruments, Techniques and Application

The aim of this study is to innovate wave-based depth-inversion towards smarter and faster algorithms to be used with various remote sensing instruments for broad community use. Wave-based depth inversion describes a branch of coastal remote sensing, which uses video recordings of a wave-field to derive depths and thereby create digital maps of...

Hover and fast flight of minimum-mass mission-capable flying robots

Highly automated Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or "flying robots" are rapidly becoming an important asset to society. The last decade has seen the advent of an impressive number of new UAV types and applications. For many applications, the UAVs need to be safe, highly automated, and versatile. Safety is a prerequisite to allowing their use in...

Integrating swarm intelligence with bayesian networks for continuous UAV-based surveillance in dynamic environments

The loss of wildlife due to illegal poaching activity poses threats on both the survival of iconic animal species and the livelihood of local communities. This research proposes a distributed surveillance model in which a UAV swarm autonomously coordinates continuous surveillance in a dynamic environment. The adaptive behaviour of poachers has...

The longitudinal handling characteristics of the Skysurfer X8

For decades the physical appearance of aircraft remained more or less unchanged. The increase in efficiency which still can be made by improving this design, is limited. More researchers have started to investigate new design options that represent a departure from established concepts. The main drivers behind these endeavors are the tightening...

Aerial Robotics: State-based Conflict Detection and Resolution (Detect and Avoid) in High Traffic Densities and Complexities

Purpose of Review A lot of research into decentralised, state-based conflict detection and resolution, or detect and avoid algorithms has been executed. This paper explains the essential properties of state-based conflict detection and reviews the work in the context of applications for not only manned but also unmanned aerial vehicles, where...

Solar Powered Drones: Power Electronics

Sustainable energy technologies are ever-increasing in popularity, not only among companies but also among consumers. Photovoltaic, or PV, cells are amongst the most well known in this field. This project was set up for designing a PV-powered UAV that is able to generate an albedo map of an area equal or bigger than the campus of the TU Delft in...

Parametric Investigation on Simulated Staring FMCW Radar for Anti-Drone Swarms

This paper presents parametric investigation results on a staring FMCW radar system which targets drone swarms. The parametric investigation has been carried out by using the RAPID-SIM which facilitates system-level analysis of drone swarms' radar signatures. This paper explains concepts of the simulator's each module and also covers two...

Modeling and Implementing Power Electronics Systems for Solar Powered RC Planes

This BSc thesis concerns the solar plane bachelor graduation project. This project aims to improve the flight time of a commercially available RC plane by utilizing photovoltaic technologies. In this thesis the power electronics system that supplies power generated by photovoltaic technologies to the RC plane used during the solar plane project...

Vision-based Autonomous Drone racing in GPS-denied Environments

High-speed autonomous flight of Micro Air Vehicles has gained much attention in recent years. However, flight in complex GPS-denied environments still poses a serious challenge. One scenario which contains these elements is drone racing, where pilots have to fly complex tracks at high speed, often in an indoor environment. In this work we...

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Goal-directed Visual Navigation

Safe navigation in a cluttered environment is a key capability for the autonomous operation of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). This work explores a (deep) Reinforcement Learning (RL) based approach for monocular vision based obstacle avoidance and goal directed navigation for MAVs in cluttered environments. We investigated this problem in the...

Potential Field Methods for Safe Reinforcement Learning: Exploring Q-Learning and Potential Fields

A Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent learns about its environment through exploration. For most physical applications such as search and rescue UAVs, this exploration must take place with safety in mind. Unregulated exploration, especially at the beginning of a run, will lead to fatal situations such as crashes. One approach to mitigating these...

Application of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in sailing training and other marine environments

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are an up-and-coming cost-effective solution in aerial monitoring, analysis and documentation. To this end, multi-rotor UAVs, such as the Aerialtronics Altura V2, offer accurate, automated, suspended flight, with minimal user engagement. The project investigated into whether such devices can be used effectively for...