A Computationally Efficient Moving Horizon Estimator for Ultra-Wideband Localization on Small Quadrotors

We present a computationally efficient moving horizon estimator that allows for real-time localization using Ultra-Wideband measurements on small quadrotors. The estimator uses only a single iteration of a simple gradient descent method to optimize the state estimate based on past measurements, while using random sample consensus to reject...

Unsupervised Tuning of Filter Parameters Without Ground-Truth Applied to Aerial Robots

Autonomous robots heavily rely on well-tuned state estimation filters for successful control. This letter presents a novel automatic tuning strategy for learning filter parameters by minimizing the innovation, i.e., the discrepancy between expected and received signals from all sensors. The optimization process only requires the inputs and...

Design, control, and visual navigation of the DelftaCopter VTOL tail-sitter UAV

To participate in the Outback Medical Express UAV Challenge 2016, a vehicle was designed and tested that can autonomously hover precisely, takeoff and land vertically, fly fast forward efficiently, and use computer vision to locate a person and a suitable landing location. The vehicle is a novel hybrid tail‐sitter combining a delta‐shaped...