DelFly II Autonomous Navigation

[From BotJunkie]: "The DelFly II from TU Delft is one of the most promising flapping wing micro UAVs we’ve seen, and at the International Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Flight Competition last week the little MAV got quite a workout. The video shows the robot flying along with a feed from the onboard camera and some of the vision algorithms being used to navigate. Especially cool is how the DelFly II actually runs into a wall at one point and bounces right back, which is one of the big advantages of a flapping wing design over a rotary wing. Also, that optic flow navigation technique is something that we’ve written about before; it replicates the way that insects navigate, using simple moving patterns to determine speed and direction relative to objects.

BotJunkie continues: "It’s not specified in the video what level of autonomy was used on the Delfly II… The competition permitted both full autonomy and remote control based on onboard video. At the very least, the first sequence (the figure eight around the two orange poles) seems to be completely autonomous, albeit (as far as I can tell) using a ground station to interpret the video and send steering commands to the robot.

If you think 16 grams is pretty small for an autonomous robot, don’t forget the DelFly Micro, which weighs just a hair (literally) over 3 (!) grams, and also manages to carry an onboard camera that can transmit streaming video. The DelFly Nano (1.5 grams) still seems to be a work in progress, and as for the DelFly Pico, somebody at TU Delft sneezed nearby and now they can’t find it."

[ TU Delft ]

[ IMAV 2010 ]

we (the DelFly team) are not in the office for a few weeks so it will be hard to contact us. The pole racing was done many autonomous (we had to little preparation time to do it completely autonomous, and only took over when it almost hit the pole). In this video 1 minute of autonomous flight is show in a normal room https://www.youtube.com/user/microuav#p/u/3/fuuxjWgr3Qg .

entering the house was done on goggles like this video: https://www.youtube.com/user/microuav#p/u/5/cuqObbd15u8

2 years ago in 2008 we did the pole racing completely autonomous. We put a line of A4 paper on the ground. the DelFly II had to follow the line. like this video but not in a oval but in a figure of 8 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIqGtA7hc8

This wend very well on the competition so this year we want to do it without aids.

In 2011 the IMAV2011 will be in Delft again. www.imav2011.org will be undated soon. Some pictures of Emav2009 in delft check http://www.emav2009.org/

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Admin

Morli July 17, 2010 at 10:13pm

Good work microuav guys.
"somebody at TU Delft sneezed nearby and now they can’t find it." thank god "someone" sneezed, imagine if he/she had yawned :O)
here is the micro flying
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3D Robotics

Chris Anderson July 17, 2010 at 12:49pm

Thanks for the clarification! Impressive work...
microuav July 17, 2010 at 11:06am

we (the DelFly team) are not in the office for a few weeks so it will be hard to contact us. The pole racing was done many autonomous (we had to little preparation time to do it completely autonomous, and only took over when it almost hit the pole). In this video 1 minute of autonomous flight is show in a normal room https://www.youtube.com/user/microuav#p/u/3/fuuxjWgr3Qg .

entering the house was done on goggles like this video: https://www.youtube.com/user/microuav#p/u/5/cuqObbd15u8

2 years ago in 2008 we did the pole racing completely autonomous. We put a line of A4 paper on the ground. the DelFly II had to follow the line. like this video but not in a oval but in a figure of 8 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIqGtA7hc8

This wend very well on the competition so this year we want to do it without aids.

In 2011 the IMAV2011 will be in Delft again. www.imav2011.org will be undated soon. Some pictures of Emav2009 in delft check http://www.emav2009.org/
3D Robotics

Chris Anderson July 17, 2010 at 8:18am

Update: it seems that most of the competition flight was not in autonomous mode. I'll be contacting the DelFly II team to get the facts right.

This reply was deleted.