A Low-cost, Safe and Easy-to-Use Flying Platform for Outdoor Robotic Research and Education

Aerial Robotics are interesting and useful tools because they have some intrinsic advantages over ground and water based systems, like the possibility to observe things from above or to locomote without being perturbed by obstacles and rough terrain. However, research in this field is limited by the complexity and expensiveness of existing platforms. To boost the popularity of aerial robotics and provide easier access to it, we present the first steps of developing an autonomous flying platform that is unique in its way of combining simplicity, robustness and ease of operation. This will be accomplished by using only a small set of simple and reliable sensors together with a modular electronic control system. A robust and safe airframe will allow to fly almost everywhere, in particular near universities and research labs. We aim at an aerial testbed which is readily usable out of the box and targeted at a wide range of real-world outdoor experiments.