Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles: Design, Perception & Control

Hosted by ETH Zurich
4 – 8 July, 2011

Autonomous aerial vehicles are about to play major roles in tasks like reconnaissance for search and rescue, environment monitoring, security surveillance. Their mobility and sensing capabilities – unavailable ground robots – make them the ideal platform for exploration, mapping, and monitoring tasks, and for transport/delivery of payloads in complex 3-dimensional environments. If they are further realized in small scale, they can also be used in narrow outdoor and indoor environments, and they represent only a limited risk for the environment and people living in it. However, for such operations today's systems navigating only on GPS information are no longer sufficient. Fully autonomous operation in cities or other dense environments requires the micro aerial vehicle (MAV) to fly at low altitude or indoors – where GPS signals are often shadowed – and to explore actively unknown environments while avoiding collisions and creating maps. This involves a number of challenges on all levels: helicopter design, power supply, perception, actuation, navigation, and control. In this summer school we will give a compact introduction into the engineering fundamentals of micro aerial vehicles, from design to perception and control. Read More >>