As part of our commitment to developing robots for use in real world applications, we organise annual practice sessions with professionals from the search and rescue community and take our… Read more
Open Source Robotics
NCCR Robotics publishes open source software and datasets, please see below for a list and links to where they can be downloaded. Robogen RoboGen™ is an open source platform… Read more
Dronistics: new NCCR Robotics spin-off
The NCCR Robotics Spin Fund committee has granted Przemyslaw Kornatowski the Spin Fund for Dronistics. Dronistics is the 11th NCCR Robotics Spin-off and is hosted at Floreano Lab.
IEEE TRO best paper award
Scaramuzza lab received the TRO best paper award at ICRA 2018 in Brisbane, Australia for their paper on IMU pre-integration.
NCCR Robotics drones showcased at VivaTech 2018 in Paris
Several drones were provided by NCCR Robotics to be exhibited at VivaTech 2018 in Paris last May, including a Dronistics drone. L’Agefi published a special “Home of Drones” magazine in support of this event, which features NCCR Robotics director Dario Floreano, as well as some of our spin-offs (Flyability, Foldaways Haptics and Fotokite). You …
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Fotokite, NCCR Robotics spin-off, wins Round II of the GENIUS NY accelerator
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that the winner of the $1 million grand prize from Round II of the GENIUS NY accelerator is Fotokite, a team from Switzerland. The initiative is one of the world’s largest business competitions focused on unmanned systems. GENIUS NY, a year-long business accelerator, awarded six finalist teams a total …
Continue reading “Fotokite, NCCR Robotics spin-off, wins Round II of the GENIUS NY accelerator”
NCCR drones can now be effortlessly controlled with pointing gestures.
NCCR drones can now be effortlessly controlled with pointing gestures. A video demonstration of the system developed by IDSIA has been published at the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2018) conference, March 5-8, 2018, Chicago, IL, USA. More info: http://people.idsia.ch/~gromov/hri-landing/
Fotokite selected amongst finalists of the Genius NY Competition
Fotokite, an NCCR Robotics spin-off, has been selected amongst the 6 finalists of the Genius NY Competition The Highlights The cohort will arrive at The Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse, NY in January for nearly 12 months of acceleration and incubation. Two phase in-residence accelerator program Phase One: Six teams receive a monthly stipend ($10,000 per month …
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Scaramuzza lab at IROS 2017
Scaramuzza lab was nominated for the Best Paper Award on Safety Security and Rescue Robotics Finalist and ranked 2nd at the IROS 2017 Autonomous Drone Race.
RPG drones use event cameras to fly faster and even in the dark!
First ever autonomous flight with an event camera, which demonstrates agile manoeuvers and flying in low-light environments. Read more
Drones can almost see in the dark
(credit: UZH/Davide Scaramuzza) UZH researchers have taught drones how to fly using an eye-inspired camera, opening the door to them performing fast, agile maneuvers and flying in low-light environments. Possible applications could include supporting rescue teams with search missions at dusk or dawn. To fly safely, drones need to know their precise position and orientation …
A foldable cargo drone
The field of drone delivery is currently very much in the public eye. However, the reason that your internet shopping doesn’t yet arrive via drone is that current flying robots are difficult to transport and store and can prove a safety risk to people. A team from Floreano Lab, NCCR Robotics and EPFL presents a new type of cargo drone …
Past Events
| Date/Time | Event | Description |
|---|---|---|
|
31 Jul – 2 Aug 2018 All Day |
EPFL Drone Days
EPFL, Lausanne Suisse |
Some NCCR Robotics laboratories will present demos at the EPFL Drone Days 2018. https://dronedays.epfl.ch |
|
12 Sep – 15 Sep 2017 All Day |
11th Conference on Field and Service Robotics
ETH Zurich, Zurich |
For more details and to register please see: https://www.fsr.ethz.ch/ |
|
6 Sep – 8 Sep 2017 All Day |
European Conference on Mobile Robotics
Paris, Paris |
Prof. Davide Scaramuzza will be a keynote speaker at this years European Conference on Mobile Robotics in Paris. |
|
1 Sep – 3 Sep 2017 All Day |
EPFL Drone Days
EPFL, Lausanne Suisse |
From 1 to 3 September 2017, EPFL's Ecublens campus will host the first-ever EPFL Drone Days. This event, which will include the Swiss drone racing championship, a robotics showcase and... |
|
2 Jun 2017 8:30 am – 5:00 pm |
ICRA Workshop on Event-based vision
sands expo and convention centre, Singapore 018971 |
Tobi Delbruck and Davide Scaramuzza are confirmed speakers. For more information please see: http://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/ICRA17_event_vision_workshop.html |
|
27 Mar – 31 Mar 2017 All Day |
Design, Automation and Test in Europe 2017
SwissTech Convention Center, Ecublens |
We will be at the DATE 2017 conference presenting a booth with Swiss Robotics partners. If you would like to arrange a time to meet please contact techtransfer@dev.nccr-robotics.ch |
|
13 Jul – 15 Jul 2016 All Day |
Workshop on Dynamic Locomotion and Manipulation (DLMC2016)
ETH Zurich, Zurich |
Please see the website http://www.dlmc2016.ethz.ch/ |
Micro-Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) for Search and Rescue Applications
Posted on: July 23, 2018
Flyability Introduces the Range Extender
Posted on: May 15, 2018
A little fold-up joystick brings haptics to portable devices
Posted on: April 18, 2018
Landing a Drone with Pointing Gestures
Posted on: March 29, 2018
DroNet: Learning to Fly by Driving
Posted on: January 23, 2018
Integrative Demo of Aerial and Terrestrial Robots for Rescue Missions – 1st November 2017
Posted on: December 12, 2017
5th Year Anniversary of the Robotics and Perception Group
Posted on: December 5, 2017
Swiss Robotics Industry Day 2017
Posted on: November 21, 2017
Visual Inertial State Estimation at 20m/s on DARPA FLA Drone with SVO 2.0
Posted on: November 7, 2017
IROS 2017 Autonomous Drone Race: Vision-based Navigation Running fully Onboard
Posted on: October 11, 2017
Drohnen mit dem Körper steuern
Publication date: August 16, 2018
Published in: NZZ
Ditch the joystick? Swiss develop jacket that pilots drones
Publication date: August 3, 2018
Published in: Fox Carolina
Ditch the joystick? Swiss develop jacket that pilots drones
Publication date: August 2, 2018
Published in: TDN.com
An der Orientierung in unübersichtlichem Gelände scheitert die künstliche Intelligenz regelmässig – doch kristallisiert sich hier eine Lösung heraus
Publication date: July 27, 2018
Published in: NZZ
Insect-Wing-Inspired Drone Turns Stiff or Flexible Based on Circumstances
Publication date: July 27, 2018
Published in: AZO Robotics
L’EPFL développe un drone incassable
Publication date: July 26, 2018
Published in: La Télé
An insect-inspired drone deforms upon impact
Publication date: July 26, 2018
Published in: Science Daily
Video of the week: origami-inspired drone takes knocks and keeps flying
Publication date: July 26, 2018
Published in: The Engineer
Un drone origami inspiré des insectes
Publication date: July 25, 2018
Published in: 24 Heures
Un drone origami inspiré des insectes
Publication date: July 25, 2018
Published in: 20 Minutes
Prof. Dario Floreano NCCR Director & Professor Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) and Management Team, EPFL dario.floreano@epfl.ch +41 21 693 52 30
Prof. Margarita Chli Professor Vision for Robotics Lab (V4RL), ETH Zurich chlim@ethz.ch +41 44 632 08 38
Dr. Stefano Mintchev Postdoctoral Researcher Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS), EPFL stefano.mintchev@epfl.ch +41 21 693 05 91
Dr. Jun Shintake Postdoctoral Researcher Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS), EPFL jun.shintake@epfl.ch +41 21 693 77 01
Carine Rognon Doctoral Student Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS), EPFL carine.rognon@epfl.ch +41 21 693 73 54
Can't see who you were looking for? You might want to try browsing by lab or looking in the A-Z people list.
Looking for publications? You might want to consider searching on the EPFL Infoscience site which provides advanced publication search capabilities.
A Collision Resilient Flying Robot
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Flying robots that can locomote efficiently in GPS-denied cluttered environments have many applications, such as in search and rescue scenarios. However, dealing with the high amount of obstacles inherent to such environments is a major challenge for flying vehicles. Conventional flying platforms cannot afford to collide with obstacles, as the disturbance from the impact may provoke a crash to the ground, especially when friction forces generate torques affecting the attitude of the platform. We propose a concept of resilient flying robots capable of colliding into obstacles without compromising their flight stability. Such platforms present great advantages over existing robots as they are capable of robust flight in cluttered environments without the need for complex sense and avoid strategies or 3D mapping of the environment. We propose a design comprising an inner frame equipped with conventional propulsion and stabilization systems enclosed in a protective cage that can rotate passively thanks to a 3-axis gimbal system, which reduces the impact of friction forces on the attitude of the inner frame. After addressing important design considerations thanks to a collision model and validation experiments, we present a proof-of-concept platform, named GimBall, capable of flying in various cluttered environments. Field experiments demonstrate the robot’s ability to fly fully autonomously through a forest while experiencing multiple collisions.
Posted on: November 29, 2013
Keywords: aerial robotics, biology, collisions, flying robots, gimbal system, gimball, insect, resilience, robustness
A method for ego-motion estimation in micro-hovering platforms flying in very cluttered environments
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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. In this paper, we propose a novel ego-motion estimation algorithm for hovering robots equipped with inertial and optic-flow sensors that runs in real- time on a microcontroller and enables autonomous flight. Unlike many vision-based methods, this algorithm does not rely on feature tracking, structure estimation, additional dis- tance sensors or assumptions about the environment. In this method, we introduce the translational optic-flow direction constraint, which uses the optic-flow direction but not its scale to correct for inertial sensor drift during changes of direction. This solution requires comparatively much sim- pler electronics and sensors and works in environments of any geometry. Here we describe the implementation and per- formance of the method on a hovering robot equipped with eight 0.65 g optic-flow sensors, and show that it can be used for closed-loop control of various motions.
Posted on: February 1, 2016
An Active Uprighting Mechanism for Flying Robots
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Flying robots have unique advantages in the exploration of cluttered environments such as caves or collapsed buildings. Current systems however have difficulty in dealing with the large amount of obstacles inherent to such environments. Collisions with obstacles generally result in crashes from which the platform can no longer recover. This paper presents a method for designing active uprighting mechanisms for protected rotorcraft-type flying robots that allow them to upright and subsequently take off again after an otherwise mission-ending collision. This method is demonstrated on a tailsitter flying robot which is capable of consistently uprighting after falling on its side using a spring-based ’leg’ and returning to the air to continue its mission.
Posted on: February 20, 2012
Contact-based navigation for an autonomous flying robot
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Autonomous navigation in obstacle-dense indoor environments is very challenging for flying robots due to the high risk of collisions, which may lead to mechanical damage of the platform and eventual failure of the mission. While conventional approaches in autonomous navigation favor obstacle avoidance strategies, recent work showed that collision-robust flying robots could hit obstacles without breaking and even self-recover after a crash to the ground. This approach is particularly interesting for autonomous navigation in complex environments where collisions are unavoidable, or for reducing the sensing and control complexity involved in obstacle avoidance. This paper aims at showing that collision-robust platforms can go a step further and exploit contacts with the environment to achieve useful navigation tasks based on the sense of touch. This approach is typically useful when weight restrictions prevent the use of heavier sensors, or as a low-level detection mechanism supplementing other sensing modalities. In this paper, a solution based on force and inertial sensors used to detect obstacles all around the robot is presented. Eight miniature force sensors, weighting 0.9g each, are integrated in the structure of a collision-robust flying platform without affecting its robustness. A proof-of-concept experiment demonstrates the use of contact sensing for exploring autonomously a room in 3D, showing significant advantages compared to a previous strategy. To our knowledge this is the first fully autonomous flying robot using touch sensors as only exteroceptive sensors.
Posted on: July 1, 2013
Keywords: aerial robotics, aerial vehicle, autonomous robots, contact, flying robots, force, mav, navigation, robotics, sensing
The AirBurr: A Flying Robot That Can Exploit Collisions
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Research made over the past decade shows the use of increasingly complex methods and heavy platforms to achieve autonomous flight in cluttered environments. However, efficient behaviors can be found in nature where limited sensing is used, such as in insects progressing toward a light at night. Interestingly, their success is based on their ability to recover from the numerous collisions happening along their imperfect flight path. The goal of the AirBurr project is to take inspiration from these insects and develop a new class of flying robots that can recover from collisions and even exploit them. Such robots are designed to be robust to crashes and can take-off again without human intervention. They navigate in a reactive way and, unlike conventional approaches, they don’t need heavy modelling in order to fly autonomously. We believe that this new paradigm will bring flying robots out of the laboratory environment and allow them to tackle unstructured, cluttered environments. This paper aims at presenting the vision of the AirBurr project, as well as the latest results in the design of a platform capable of sustaining collisions and self-recovering after crashes.
Posted on: March 7, 2012