Micro-Air Vehicle Navigation and Control
Our group has developed some of the first fully autonomous micro-aerial vehicle (MAV) systems capable of self-directed exploration in both GPS-Denied and communications-denied environments. The absence of GPS and high-bandwidth communications links limits the sensing and processing available to the MAV to only that which can be carried onboard the vehicle.
An example of our past work includes a fixed wing vehicle capable of localizing itself in a known map and flying autonomously using only a 2D laser scanner and inertial measurement unit (IMU), with all processing performed onboard the vehicle.
Our recent work has focused on using small, inexpensive cameras to estimate the pose of the MAV and the geometric structure of the environment to enable high-speed autonomous flight.
Publications
- K. Ok, W. N. Greene, and N. Roy. “Simultaneous Tracking and Rendering: Real-time Monocular Localization for MAVs” Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Stockholm, 2016. [PDF] [Video]
- W. N Greene, K. Ok, P. Lommel, and N. Roy. “Multi-Level Mapping: Real-time Dense Monocular SLAM.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Stockholm, 2016. [PDF] [Video]
- K. Ok, D. Gamage, T. Drummond, F. Dellaert, and N. Roy. “Monocular Image Space Tracking on a Computationally Limited MAV.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seattle, 2015. [PDF]
- A. Bry, C. Richter, A. Bachrach and N. Roy. “Aggressive Flight of Fixed-Wing and Quadrotor Aircraft in Dense Indoor Environments”. International Journal of Robotics Research, 37(7):969-1002, June 2015. [PDF] [Bibtex Entry]
- Charles Richter, Adam Bry, Nicholas Roy. (2013). “Polynomial Trajectory Planning for Aggressive Quadrotor Flight in Dense Indoor Environments.” International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR), Singapore, 2013. [PDF] [BiBTeX Entry]
- A. Bachrach, S. Prentice, R. He, P. Henry, A. S. Huang, M. Krainin, D. Maturana, D. Fox and N. Roy. “Estimation, Planning and Mapping for Autonomous Flight Using an RGB-D Camera in GPS-denied Environments”. International Journal of Robotics Research, 31(11):1320-1343, September 2012.
- Adam Bry, Abraham Bachrach and Nicholas Roy. “State Estimation for Aggressive Flight in GPS-Denied Environments Using Onboard Sensing”. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). St Paul, MN 2012. (Nominated, best conference paper.). [PDF] [BiBTeX Entry]
- A. Huang, A. Bachrach, P. Henry, M. Krainin, D. Maturana, D. Fox, N. Roy. “Visual Odometry and Mapping for Autonomous Flight Using an RGB-D Camera”, Proceedings of the International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR), Flagstaff, AZ, 2011. [PDF] [Bibtex Entry]
- A. Bachrach, S. Prentice, R. He, and N. Roy. “RANGE - Robust Autonomous Navigation in GPS-denied Environments”. Journal of Field Robotics. 28(5):646-666, September 2011. [Compressed postscript] [PDF] [Bibtex Entry]
- A. Bachrach, R. He, N. Roy. “Autonomous Flight in Unknown Indoor Environments”. International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, 1(4): 217-228, December 2009.
- Ruijie He, Sam Prentice and Nicholas Roy. “Planning in Information Space for a Quadrotor Helicopter in a GPS-denied Environments’’. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2008). Los Angeles, 2008.
- Abraham Bachrach, Alborz Garamifard, Daniel Gurdan, Ruijie He, Sam Prentice, Jan Stumpf and Nicholas Roy. “Co-ordinated Tracking and Planning using Air and Ground Vehicles’’. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER), Athens, 2008.