Jean-Christophe Zufferey

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We describe an incremental approach towards the development of autonomous indoor flyers that use only vision to navigate in textured environments. In order to cope with the severe weight and energy constraints of such systems, we use spiking neural controllers that can be implemented in tiny micro-controllers and map visual information into motor commands. The network morphology is evolved by means of an evolutionary process on the physical robots. This methodology is tested in three robots of increasing co

Deployment of multiple flying robots has attracted the interest of several research groups in the recent times both because such a feat represents many interesting scientific challenges and because aerial collective systems have a huge potential in terms of applications. By working together, multiple robots can perform a given task quicker or more efficiently than a single system. Furthermore, multiple robots can share computing, sensing and communication payloads thus leading to lighter robots that could b

Many environments where robots are expected to operate are cluttered with objects, walls, debris, and different horizontal and vertical structures. In this chapter, we present four design features that allow small robots to rapidly and safely move in 3 dimensions through cluttered environments: a perceptual system capable of detecting obstacles in the robot’s surroundings, including the ground, with minimal computation, mass, and energy requirements; a flexible and protective framework capable of withstandi

This book demonstrates how bio-inspiration can lead to fully autonomous flying robots without relaying on external aids. Most existing aerial robots fly in open skies, far from obstacles, and rely on external beacons – mainly GPS – to localise and navigate. However, these robots are not able to fly at low altitude or in confined environments, and yet this poses absolutely no difficulty to insects. Indeed, flying insects display efficient flight control capabilities in complex environments despite their limi

Because of their ability to naturally float in the air, indoor airships (often called blimps) constitute an appealing platform for research in aerial robotics. However, when confronted to long lasting experiments such as those involving learning or evoluti ...

There are not yet autonomous flying robots capable of manoeuvring in small cluttered environments as insects do. Encouraged by this observation, this thesis presents the development of ultra-light flying robots and control systems going one step toward ful ...

There are not yet fully autonomous flying robots capable of maneuvering in small cluttered environments as insects do. The substantial weight and energy constraints typically encountered in this kind of robotic applications preclude the use of powerful processors and classical distance sensors. Moreover, due to their highly dynamic motion, flying systems require fast sensory-motor mapping. To pave the way toward fully autonomous indoor flying robots we take inspiration from flying insects like flies because

Swarms of flying robots can be used in disaster areas to autonomously create communication networks for rescuers and victims. Flying robots have the advantage of rapidly overcoming difficult terrain and providing unobstructed wireless communication. To allow for a swarm composed of cheap, transportable and robust robots, we avoid using positioning sensors which typically depend on the environment (GPS, cameras) or are expensive and heavy (lasers, radars). Instead, robot behaviors depend on local communicati

We aim at developing autonomous miniature hov- ering flying robots capable of navigating in unstructured GPS- denied environments. A major challenge is the miniaturization of the embedded sensors and processors allowing such platforms to fly autonomously. ...

The success of swarm behaviors often depends on the range at which robots can communicate and the speed at which they change their behavior. Challenges arise when the communication range is too small with respect to the dynamics of the robot, preventing in ...

We describe a new experimental approach whereby an indoor flying robot evolves the ability to navigate in a textured room using only visual information and neuromorphic control. The architecture of a spiking neural circuit, which is connected to the vision system and to the motors, is genetically encoded and evolved on the physical robot without human intervention. The flying robot consists of a small wireless airship equipped with a linear camera and a set of sensors used to measure its performance. Evolve

Recent work suggests that jumping locomotion in combination with a gliding phase can be used as an effective mobility principle in robotics. Compared to pure jumping without a gliding phase, the potential benefits of hybrid jump-gliding locomotion includes ...

We aim at developing autonomous micro-flyers capable of navigating within houses or small indoor environments using vision as principal source of information. Due to severe weight and energy constraints, inspiration is taken from the fly for the selection ...

Unlike existing aerial swarm systems, we aim at developing algorithms which do not require global or relative positioning information concerning agents and their neighbors. This alleviates the need for sensors which require calibration, are expensive and heavy or unusable because of environmental constraints. Rather than positioning, MAVs rely only on simple sensors (magnetic compass, speed sensor and altitude sensor) and local communication with neighbors. Our endeavor is motivated by an application whereb

We aim at implementing a swarm of Micro-Air-Vehicles for creating communication networks (SMAVNETs) in disaster areas. For this purpose, we propose strategies for steering flying robots using only communication hardware (e.g. WiFi module or radio modem) an ...

Optic-flow is believed to be the main source of information allowing insects to control their flight. Some researchers have tried to apply this paradigm to small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). So far, none of them has been able to demonstrate a fully autonomous flight of a free-flying system without relying on other cues such as GPS and/or some sort of orientation sensor (IMU, horizon detector, etc.). Getting back to the reactive approach suggested by Gibson (direct perception) and Braitenberg (direct con

The idea of creating collective aerial systems is appealing because several rather simple flying vehicles could join forces to cover a large area in little time in applications such as monitoring, mapping, search and rescue, or airborne communication relay ...

This paper describes the European Commission Framework 7 funded project myCopter (2011-2014). The project is still at an early stage so the paper starts with the current transportation issues faced by developed countries and describes a means to solve them through the use of personal aerial transportation. The concept of personal air vehicles (PAV) is briefly reviewed and how this project intends to tackle the problem from a different perspective described. It is argued that the key reason that many PAV con

This paper describes the European Commission (EC) Framework 7 funded project myCopter (2011-2014). The project is still at an early stage so the paper starts with a discussion of the current transportation issues faced, for example, by European countries and describes a means to solve them through the use of a personal aerial transportation system (PATS). The concept of personal air vehicles (PAVs) is briefly reviewed and how this project intends to tackle the problem described. It is argued that the key re

We aim at developing autonomous miniature hovering flying robots capable of navigating in unstructured GPS-denied environments. A major challenge is the miniaturization of the embedded sensors and processors that allow such platforms to fly by themselves. ...

Jean-Christophe Zufferey

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Vision-based Navigation from Wheels to Wings

Aerial collective systems

Aerial Locomotion in Cluttered Environments

Bio-inspired Flying Robots: Experimental Synthesis of Autonomous Indoor Flyers

Flying over the Reality Gap: From Simulated to Real Indoor Airships

Bio-inspired vision-based flying robots

Bio-inspired Indoor Microflyers

Communication-based Swarming for Flying Robots

Optic-Flow Based Control of a 46g Quadrotor

Reynolds flocking in reality with fixed-wing robots: communication range vs. maximum turning rate

Evolving Vision-based Flying Robots

Performance analysis of jump-gliding locomotion for miniature robotics

Fly-inspired Visual Steering of an Ultralight Indoor Aircraft

Pheromone-based Swarming for Position-less MAVs

Communication-based Swarming for Flying Robots

Optic Flow to Steer and Avoid Collisions in 3D

Dealing with Mid-Air Collisions in Dense Collective Aerial Systems

myCopter – Enabling Technologies for Personal Aerial Transportation Systems

myCopter – Enabling Technologies for Personal Aerial Transportation Systems.

A method for ego-motion estimation in micro-hovering platforms flying in very cluttered environments