The Exploring DelFly

The Exploring DelFly: How to increase the indoor explored area of the DelFly Explorer by means of computationally efficient routing decisions?

Fonville, C.R.

de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor)

Aerospace Engineering

Control & Operations

Control & Simulation

2016-08-10

Small robots, such as Micro Aerial Vehicles, form an increasingly popular field of interests in research, industry and the consumer market. The autonomous capabilities of these systems keep evolving and one of the main research goals is to reach full autonomy. However, this is often achieved at the cost of growing hardware demands. In this study a computationally light and efficient way to enhance autonomous on-board exploration capabilities for the DelFly Explorer, a 20-gram flapping wing Micro Aerial Vehicle (FWMAV), is presented. Both theory and new insights were combined to design an exploration algorithm for the on-board stereo-vision system. The algorithm primarily consists of a disparity map based decision tree, different exploration phases and computationally light odometry. Computer simulations proved the effectiveness of the algorithm to enable autonomous exploration capabilities for the FWMAV system. Initial flight tests also show that the proposed algorithm increases its exploration capabilities and form a foundation for future research.

DelFly Explorer
Exploration Algorithm
Autonomous Exploration
Flapping Wing Micro Aerial Vehicle

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:8efab9c5-e78b-40ff-ab37-a563366d22f9

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2016 Fonville, C.R.