The MRS UAV System: Pushing the Frontiers of Reproducible Research, Real-world Deployment, and Education with Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Báča, Tomáš; Petrlík, Matěj; Vrba, Matouš; Spurný, Vojtěch; Pěnička, Robert; Heřt, Daniel; Saska, Martin

doi:10.1007/s10846-021-01383-5

Cited by 101 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…This study was conducted within the Aviation Application and Study Center, located at a state university where the researcher works. The rationale for choosing such a research context can be explained as follows: UAVs, also known as multirotor helicopters, are devices used for reconnaissance and remote sensing in complex environments where ground robots may fail or malfunction (Baca et al, 2021). Their flight characteristics, ability to hover, flexibility, ability to carry sensors, and low cost make them perfect for such environments (Baca et al, 2021;Eisenbeiss, 2004).…”

Section: Dacum Analysis In An Organizational Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new way of doing business during the COVID-19 pandemic

Almaz

2022

Management (Split, Online)

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This study aims to analyze the way of doing business caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in an educational organization that trains Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) pilots using DACUM (Developing A CurriculUM) analysis. A focus group was adopted as the data collection method. As a result of this empirical study, the duties, tasks, knowledge, skills, and behaviors expected from the team were determined, including the equipment needed for the continuity of the team’s activities. This empirical study provides theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on the analysis of business processes, the elaboration of DACUM analysis as a business analysis method, and the determination of how the COVID-19 has changed the way an organization does business.

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Section: Dacum Analysis In An Organizational Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new way of doing business during the COVID-19 pandemic

Almaz

2022

Management (Split, Online)

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“…The platform of choice for the field experiments is the MRS450, developed by the company Fly4Future and running the MRS UAV-system researched by the multi-robot systems group at the Czech Technical University in Prague ( Baca et al, 2021 ). It is shown in Figure 3 -left.…”

Section: Swarm Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive arbitration of aerial swarm interactions through a Gaussian kernel for coherent group motion

et al. 2022

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Swarm behaviors offer scalability and robustness to failure through a decentralized and distributed design. When designing coherent group motion as in swarm flocking, virtual potential functions are a widely used mechanism to ensure the aforementioned properties. However, arbitrating through different virtual potential sources in real-time has proven to be difficult. Such arbitration is often affected by fine tuning of the control parameters used to select among the different sources and by manually set cut-offs used to achieve a balance between stability and velocity. A reliance on parameter tuning makes these methods not ideal for field operations of aerial drones which are characterized by fast non-linear dynamics hindering the stability of potential functions designed for slower dynamics. A situation that is further exacerbated by parameters that are fine-tuned in the lab is often not appropriate to achieve satisfying performances on the field. In this work, we investigate the problem of dynamic tuning of local interactions in a swarm of aerial vehicles with the objective of tackling the stability–velocity trade-off. We let the focal agent autonomously and adaptively decide which source of local information to prioritize and at which degree—for example, which neighbor interaction or goal direction. The main novelty of the proposed method lies in a Gaussian kernel used to regulate the importance of each element in the swarm scheme. Each agent in the swarm relies on such a mechanism at every algorithmic iteration and uses it to tune the final output velocities. We show that the presented approach can achieve cohesive flocking while at the same time navigating through a set of way-points at speed. In addition, the proposed method allows to achieve other desired field properties such as automatic group splitting and joining over long distances. The aforementioned properties have been empirically proven by an extensive set of simulated and field experiments, in communication-full and communication-less scenarios. Moreover, the presented approach has been proven to be robust to failures, intermittent communication, and noisy perceptions.

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“…In these objects, it is impossible to keep a large scaffolding for a long time due to regular services, which is necessary for studying the long-term influence of restorations works, and some parts of the churches were even not reached by people for decades and need to be inspected. Both solutions proposed by our group were based on the MRS system for autonomously UAV deployment, also previously proposed in [22].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The autonomy of the designed solution relies on and builds on the open-sourced UAV system developed by the Multi-Robot Systems Group at the Czech Technical University in Prague [22]. The MRS system provides a solution based on Robot Operating System (ROS) suited for precise 3D trajectory tracking, 3D real-time state estimation and localization, inter-robot communication, and a realistic robotic simulation framework.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Safe Documentation of Historical Monuments by an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Krátký

Petráček

Nascimento

et al. 2021

IJGI

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The use of robotic systems, especially multi-rotor aerial vehicles, in the documentation of historical buildings and cultural heritage monuments has become common in recent years. However, the teleoperated robotic systems have significant limitations encouraging the ongoing development of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The autonomous robotic platforms provide a more accurate and safe measurement in distant and difficult to access areas than their teleoperated counterpart. Through the use of autonomous aerial robotic systems, access to such places by humans and building of external infrastructures like scaffolding for documentation purposes is no longer necessary. In this work, we aim to present a novel autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle designed for the documentation of hardly attainable areas of historical buildings. The prototype of this robot was tested in several historical monuments comprising scanned objects located in dark and hardly accessible areas in the upper parts of tall naves. This manuscript presents the results from two specific places: the Church of St. Anne and St. Jacob the Great in Stará Voda, and St. Maurice Church in Olomouc, both in the Czech Republic. Finally, we also compare the three-dimensional map obtained with the measurements made by the 3D laser scanner carried onboard UAV against the ones performed by a 3D terrestrial laser scanner.

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The MRS UAV System: Pushing the Frontiers of Reproducible Research, Real-world Deployment, and Education with Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Cited by 101 publications

References 74 publications

A new way of doing business during the COVID-19 pandemic

A new way of doing business during the COVID-19 pandemic

Adaptive arbitration of aerial swarm interactions through a Gaussian kernel for coherent group motion

Safe Documentation of Historical Monuments by an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

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