Publications related to SEARCHING LOST PEOPLE WITH UAVS: THE SYSTEM AND RESULTS OF THE CLOSE-SEARCH PROJECT

VDM-based navigation for Delta-wing UAVs: Models, calibration, implementation

Autonomous navigation of small UAVs is typically based on the integration of inertial navigation systems (INS) together with global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). However, GNSS signals can face various forms of interference affecting their continuous ...

EPFL2024

VDMNav: Software Architecture for Aerodynamically Constrained Navigation on Small Fixed-Wing Drones

Jan Skaloud, Gabriel François Laupré

Navigation of drones is predominantly based on sensor fusion algorithms. Most of these algorithms make use of some form of Bayesian filtering with a majority employing an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), wherein inertial measurements are fused with a Global N ...

2024

Aerodynamic modeling of a delta-wing UAV for model-based navigation

Jan Skaloud, Pasquale Longobardi

This study aims to identify an optimal, as well as practical, parametric structure for a delta-wing UAV aerodynamic model for the purpose of model-based navigation. We present a comprehensive procedure for characterizing the aerodynamics of this platform, ...

2024

Gas Sensing with Rotary-Wing Nano Aerial Vehicles

Chiara Ercolani

Harmful chemical compounds are released daily in warehouses, chemical plants and during environmental emergencies. Their uncontrolled dispersion contributes to the pollution of the atmosphere and threatens human and animal lives. When gas leaks occur, the ...

EPFL2024

Performance and accuracy of cross‐section tracking methods for hydromorphological habitat assessment in wadable rivers with sparse canopy conditions

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona, Robin Schroff

This article investigates the performance and accuracy of continuous Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) position tracking for hydromorphological surveys, based on a comprehensive river restoration monitoring campaign. The a ...

2024

Identifying aerodynamics of small fixed-wing drones using inertial measurements for model-based navigation

Jan Skaloud, Gabriel François Laupré

The success of drone missions is incumbent on an accurate determination of the drone pose and velocity, which are collectively estimated by fusing iner- tial measurement unit and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) mea- surements. However, during a G ...

2023

Heading for the Abyss: Control Strategies for Exploiting Swinging of a Descending Tethered Aerial Robot

Frank Centamori, Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Max Mirko Polzin

The use of aerial vehicles for exploration and data collection has the potential to significantly aid environmental monitoring in environments which are dangerous and hard to navigate. However, within these environments navigation can often be restricted b ...

2023

1(st) Workshop on Maritime Computer Vision (MaCVi) 2023: Challenge Results

Alexandre Massoud Alahi, Christophe De Vleeschouwer, Alexandre Bernardino, Yang Song, Siddharth Gupta

The 1st Workshop on Maritime Computer Vision (MaCVi) 2023 focused on maritime computer vision for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV), and organized several subchallenges in this domain: (i) UAV-based Maritime Object Detection ...

IEEE COMPUTER SOC2023

swissALPS: a Dataset for Imbalanced Land Cover Mapping in Alpine Regions

Valérie Zermatten

Our dataset consists of very high-resolution aerial images (50cm) and a digital elevation model (50cm) that covers approx. 2300 km2 of land above 2000m altitude in the southwestern part of Switzerland. Our land cover labels focus on alpine land cover that ...

IEEE DataPort2023

GNSS/INS Kalman Filter Integrity Monitoring with Uncertain Time Correlated Error Processes

Omar Garcia Crespillo

Safety-critical navigation applications require that estimation errors be reliably quantified and bounded. Over the last decade, significant effort has been put to guarantee a bounded position estimation by using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) ...

EPFL2022

Optimization and Real-Time Aspects of Aircraft Model-Based Navigation

Gabriel François Laupré

The Vehicle Dynamic Model (VDM) based navigation of fixed-wing drones determines the airborne trajectory in conjunction with Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors. Without Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals, this method estimates navigati ...

EPFL2022

UAV in the advent of the twenties: Where we stand and what is next

Jan Skaloud, Davide Antonio Cucci

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has surged in the last two decades, making them popular instruments for a wide range of applications, and leading to a remarkable number of scientific contributions in geoscience, remote sensing and engineering. H ...

2022

A Lightweight Device for Energy Harvesting from Power Lines with a Fixed-Wing UAV

Dario Floreano, William John Stewart

Modern UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) suffer from restrictions in flight range and time due to battery capacity limitations. One way to overcome these limitations is to harvest energy from overhead power lines. A growing body of scientific literature has ...

IEEE2022

On the benefit of concurrent adjustment of active and passive optical sensors with GNSS & raw inertial data

Jan Skaloud, Davide Antonio Cucci, Kyriaki Mouzakidou

In airborne laser scanning a high-frequency trajectory solution is typically determined from inertial sensors and employed to directly geo-reference the acquired laser points. When low-cost MEMS inertial sensors are used, such as in lightweight unmanned ae ...

2022

Calibration of Fixed-Wing UAV Aerodynamic Coefficients with Photogrammetry for VDM-based Navigation

Jan Skaloud, Gabriel François Laupré

Autonomous navigation is a crucial aspect for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle operation when encountering disturbance or denial of GNSS signal reception. Vehicle dynamic model-based navigation improves the performance of methods based exclusively on int ...

2021

Coordinated Path Planning for Surface Acoustic Beacons for Supporting Underwater Localization

Alcherio Martinoli, Anwar Ahmad Quraishi

Accurate localization is one of the biggest challenges in underwater robotics. The primary reasons behind that are unavailability of satellite-based positioning below the surface, and lack of clear features in natural water bodies for visually aided locali ...

2021

Multiscale Very High Resolution Topographic Models in Alpine Ecology: Pros and Cons of Airborne LiDAR and Drone-Based Stereo-Photogrammetry Technologies

Stéphane Joost, Aude Rogivue, Estelle Rochat, Kevin Leempoel, Annie Sandrine Guillaume

The vulnerability of alpine environments to climate change presses an urgent need to accurately model and understand these ecosystems. Popularity in the use of digital elevation models (DEMs) to derive proxy environmental variables has increased over the p ...

2021

MULLS: Versatile LiDAR SLAM via Multi-metric Linear Least Square

Yue Pan, Yujie He

The rapid development of autonomous driving and mobile mapping calls for off-the-shelf LiDAR SLAM solutions that are adaptive to LiDARs of different specifications on various complex scenarios. To this end, we propose MULLS, an efficient, low-drift, and ve ...

IEEE2021

UWB-based system for UAV Localization in GNSS-Denied Environments: Characterization and Dataset

Dario Floreano, Fabrizio Schiano

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have penetrated multiple domains over the past years. In GNSS-denied or indoor environments, aerial robots require a robust and stable localization system, often with external feedback, in order to fly safely. Motion ca ...

2020

On the adjustment, calibration and orientation of drone photogrammetry and laser-scanning

Emmanuel Pierre Quentin Clédat

Centimetre level precision mapping is essential for many applications such as land-use, infrastructure inspection, cultural heritage preservation, and construction site monitoring. However, the acquisition and its preparation (in particular the setting of ...

EPFL2020