Autonomous Quadcopter Charging Station
The IML is starting to collect quite the stable of UAVs. Unfortunately, as the fleet grows, so does the need for routine maintenance, such as battery charging. Wouldn't it be nice if the charging were automatic?
Batcopter reported by Reuters
Retuers recently reported on the Batcopter efforts of Prof. Baillieul and his team in the IML. See the video here.
Human Robotic Interactions with Kinect
This video presents results from a recent experiment involving the Microsoft XBOX Kinect controlling a Khepera III allowing a human to dance with the robot.
Batcopter, mission successful
These Brazilian Free-tailed bats (also called Tadarida) come together in the millions in caves all over Texas, leaving every night in swarms so big they can be detected by doppler radar. Somehow, they manage to fly through this dense self-clutter without colliding-- our goal is to better understand this behavior. For the AIRFOILS project, the IML team created the previously mentioned Batcopter. The goal was to fly a UAV along the dense clutter and record the bats' trajectories, using three ground-based high-speed FLIR cameras and an airborne 3D HD GoPro camera. The hope is to extract fundamental control laws of flying behavior in order to achieve better autonomous UAV flight.
The bat swarm flies in front of the setting sun
Batcopter CAD
The CAD of our Batcopter, and what it turned into.......we still need some work.
