Aerial Robotics
Our work has also resulted in spin-offs, such as Sensefly (founded in 2009, now a Parrot group company) and Flyability (founded in 2015), which won the 2015 Drones for Good award.
Related Publications
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2024
Accurate and agile flight with winged drones
Lausanne, EPFL, 2024.2023
Use of an unmanned aerial-aquatic vehicle for acoustic sensing in freshwater ecosystems
Remote Sensing In Ecology And Conservation. 2023-12-25. DOI : 10.1002/rse2.373.Resilient drones with morphing wings
Lausanne, EPFL, 2023.Wing and tail morphing in birds and drones
Lausanne, EPFL, 2023.2022
Vision-based Flocking in Aerial Robot Swarms
Lausanne, EPFL, 2022.Model Predictive Control of Aerial Swarms
Lausanne, EPFL, 2022.2021
2020
Human-friendly solutions for last-centimeter drone delivery
Lausanne, EPFL, 2020.2019
2018
2017
Localization of emergency acoustic sources by micro aerial vehicles
Journal of Field Robotics. 2017. Vol. 35, num. 2, p. 187-201. DOI : 10.1002/rob.21733.Foldable Drones: from Biology to Technology
2017. SPIE Bioinspiration, Biomimetics, and Bioreplication, Portland, Oregon, March 2017. p. 1016203-1-1016203-6. DOI : 10.1117/12.2259931.Insect-Inspired Mechanical Resilience for Multicopters
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. 2017. Vol. 2, p. 1248-1255. DOI : 10.1109/LRA.2017.2658946.Bioinspired morphing wings for extended flight envelope and roll control of small drones
Interface Focus. 2017. Vol. 7, num. 1, p. 20160092. DOI : 10.1098/rsfs.2016.0092.Human-Comfortable Collision Free Navigation for Personal Aerial Vehicles
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letter. 2017. Vol. 2, num. 1, p. 358-365. DOI : 10.1109/LRA.2016.2626520.2016
Comparative Study of Haptic Interfaces for Bilateral Teleoperation of VTOL Aerial Robots
Ieee Transactions On Systems Man Cybernetics-Systems. 2016. Vol. 46, num. 10, p. 1352-1363. DOI : 10.1109/Tsmc.2015.2503396.A Pocket Sized Foldable Quadcopter for Situational Awareness and Reconnaissance
2016. International Symposium on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (SSRR 2016), Lausanne, Switzerland, October 23-27th, 2016. p. 396-401. DOI : 10.1109/SSRR.2016.7784333.Adaptive Morphology: A Design Principle for Multimodal and Multifunctional Robots
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine. 2016. Vol. 23, num. 3, p. 42-54. DOI : 10.1109/MRA.2016.2580593.A Drone with Insect-Inspired Folding Wings
2016. 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS, Daejeon, Korea, October 9-14, 2016. p. 1576-1581. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2016.7759255.On-Board Relative Bearing Estimation for Teams of Drones Using Sound
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. 2016. Vol. 1, num. 2, p. 820-827. DOI : 10.1109/LRA.2016.2527833.Fixed-wing drones for communication networks
Lausanne, EPFL, 2016.A method for ego-motion estimation in micro-hovering platforms flying in very cluttered environments
Autonomous Robots. 2016. Vol. 40, p. 789–803. DOI : 10.1007/s10514-015-9494-4.Functional Soft Robotic Actuators Based on Dielectric Elastomers
Lausanne, EPFL, 2016.Dynamic Routing for Flying Ad Hoc Networks
IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. 2016. Vol. 65, num. 3, p. 1690-1700. DOI : 10.1109/TVT.2015.2414819.2015
Extension of a Ground Control Interface for Swarms of Small Drones
2015. SWARM 2015: The First International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics, Kyoto, Japon, October 28-30, 2015.Distributed Formation Control of Fixed Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles for Uniform Area Coverage
2015. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Hamburg, Germany, p. 669-674. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2015.7353444.Evaluation of control strategies for fixed-wing drones following slow-moving ground agents
Robotics and Autonomous Systems. 2015. Vol. 72, p. 285-294. DOI : 10.1016/j.robot.2015.06.003.Adaptive Morphology for Multi-Modal Locomotion
Lausanne, EPFL, 2015.Science, technology and the future of small autonomous drones
Nature. 2015. Vol. 521, p. 460-466. DOI : 10.1038/nature14542.Foldable and Self-Deployable Pocket Sized Quadrotor
2015. 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2015), Seattle, Washington, USA, May 26-30, 2015. p. 2190-2195. DOI : 10.1109/ICRA.2015.7139488.Performance analysis of jump-gliding locomotion for miniature robotics
Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. 2015. Vol. 10, p. 025006. DOI : 10.1088/1748-3190/10/2/025006.Audio-based Positioning and Target Localization for Swarms of Micro Aerial Vehicles
Lausanne, EPFL, 2015.A bioinspired multi-modal flying and walking robot
Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. 2015. Vol. 10, num. 1, p. 016005. DOI : 10.1088/1748-3190/10/1/016005.A Foldable Antagonistic Actuator
IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics. 2015. Vol. 20, num. 5, p. 1997-2008. DOI : 10.1109/TMECH.2014.2359337.2014
Vertical take-off and landing aerial vehicle
CN108137152; ES2767689; EP3347268; AU2016319276; PL3024726; EP3347268; CN108137152; AU2016319276; EP3024726; CN105164015; JP6224234; ES2633217; US9725170; EP2813428; US9611032; WO2017042354; JP2016523759; EP3024726; US2016001875; US2015360776; CN105164015; AU2014280222; WO2014198774; EP2813428.
2014.Method to determine a direction and amplitude of a current velocity estimate of a moving device
US2015293138; EP2917693; WO2014072377; EP2730888.
2014.Curved artificial compound-eyes for autonomous navigation
2014. Micro-Optics, Brussels, Belgium, APR 14-16, 2014. DOI : 10.1117/12.2052710.Miniature artificial compound eyes for optic-flow-based robotic navigation
2014. Workshop on Information Optics WIO2014, Neuchatel, Switzerland, July 7-11, 2014. p. 1-3. DOI : 10.1109/WIO.2014.6933290.Audio-based Localization for Swarms of Micro Air Vehicles
2014. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2014), Hong Kong, China, May 31 – June 7, 2014. p. 4729-4734. DOI : 10.1109/ICRA.2014.6907551.A Collision Resilient Flying Robot
Journal of Field Robotics. 2014. Vol. 31, num. 4, p. 469-509. DOI : 10.1002/rob.21495.2013
Audio-based Relative Positioning System for Multiple Micro Air Vehicle Systems
2013. Robotics: Science and Systems RSS2013, Berlin, Germany, June 24-28, 2013.Optic-Flow Based Control of a 46g Quadrotor
2013. Workshop on Vision-based Closed-Loop Control and Navigation of Micro Helicopters in GPS-denied Environments, IROS 2013, Tokyo, Japan, November 7, 2013.Euler Spring Collision Protection for Flying Robots
2013. International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Tokyo, Japan, November 3-7, 2013. p. 1886-1892. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2013.6696606.A Flying Robot with Adaptive Morphology for Multi-Modal Locomotion
2013. IROS 13, Tokyo, Japan, November 3-6, 2013. p. 1361-1366. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2013.6696526.Contact-based navigation for an autonomous flying robot
2013. International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Tokyo, Japan, November 3-7, 2013. p. 3987-3992. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2013.6696926.Testbed for Fast-Deployable Flying WiFi Networks
2013. FOURTH NORDIC WORKSHOP ON SYSTEM AND NETWORK OPTIMIZATION FOR WIRELESS, Kittila, Finland, 2013.Miniature curved artificial compound eyes
PNAS. 2013. Vol. 110, num. 23, p. 9332-9337. DOI : 10.1073/pnas.1219068110.Beat-Based Synchronization and Steering for Groups of Fixed-Wing Flying Robots
2013. 10th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems. p. 281-293. DOI : 10.1007/978-3-642-32723-0_21.Energy-Time Efficiency in Aerial Swarm Deployment
2013. 10th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, November 1-3, 2010. p. 5-18. DOI : 10.1007/978-3-642-32723-0_1.Evolution of division of labor in artificial societies
Lausanne, EPFL, 2013.Representation of Vehicle Dynamics in Haptic Teleoperation of Aerial Robots
2013. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Karlsruhe, May 6-10, 2013. p. 1485-1491. DOI : 10.1109/ICRA.2013.6630767.A Perching Mechanism for Flying Robots Using a Fibre-Based Adhesive
2013. ICRA 13, Karlsruhe, May 6-7, 2013. p. 4433-4438. DOI : 10.1109/ICRA.2013.6631206.Swarmanoid: a novel concept for the study of heterogeneous robotic swarms
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine. 2013. Vol. 20, num. 4, p. 60-71. DOI : 10.1109/MRA.2013.2252996.Beat-based synchronization and steering for groups of fixed-wing flying robots
2013. International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotics Systems, Lausanne, Switzerland, November 1-3, 2010. p. 281–293. DOI : 10.1007/978-3-642-32723-0_21.2012
Robust Acoustic Source Localization of Emergency Signals from Micro Air Vehicles
2012. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal, October 7-12, 2012.. p. 4737-4742. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2012.6385608.Implementation of a Wireless Mesh Network of Ultra Light MAVs with Dynamic Routing
2012. IEEE GLOBECOM 2012, 3rd International IEEE Workshop on Wireless Networking & Control for Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles 2012, Anaheim, California, USA, December 3-7, 2012. p. 1591-1596. DOI : 10.1109/GLOCOMW.2012.6477823.Design of Flying Robots for Collision Absorption and Self-Recovery
Lausanne, EPFL, 2012.Indoor Navigation with a Swarm of Flying Robots
2012. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2012), St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, May 14-18, 2012. p. 4641-4647. DOI : 10.1109/ICRA.2012.6224987.The AirBurr: A Flying Robot That Can Exploit Collisions
2012. International Conference on Complex Medical Engineering (CME), 2012 ICME, Kobe, Japan, July 1-4, 2012. p. 569-574. DOI : 10.1109/ICCME.2012.6275674.Automatically calibrating the viewing direction of optic-flow sensors
2012. Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2012 IEEE International Conference on, St-Paul, Minnesota, USA, May 14-18, 2012. p. 3956-3961. DOI : 10.1109/ICRA.2012.6225011.An Active Uprighting Mechanism for Flying Robots
IEEE Transactions on Robotics. 2012. Vol. 28, num. 5, p. 1152 -1157. DOI : 10.1109/TRO.2012.2201309.2011
myCopter – Enabling Technologies for Personal Aerial Transportation Systems
2011. International HELI World Conference, Frankfurt/Main, Germany, 2011.myCopter – Enabling Technologies for Personal Aerial Transportation Systems.
2011. European Rotorcraft Forum, Vergiate/Gallarate, Italy, September 13-15, 2011.CURVACE – CURVed Artificial Compound Eyes
2011. 2nd European Future Technologies Conference and Exhibition 2011 (FET 11), Budapest, Hungary, May 4-6, 2011. p. 308-309. DOI : 10.1016/j.procs.2011.09.040.The EPFL jumpglider: A hybrid jumping and gliding robot with rigid or folding wings
2011. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), Phuket, Thailand, December 7-11, 2011. p. 1503-1508. DOI : 10.1109/ROBIO.2011.6181502.Reynolds flocking in reality with fixed-wing robots: communication range vs. maximum turning rate
2011. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS’2011), San Francisco, September 25-30, 2011. p. 5015-5020. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2011.6095129.Aerial Locomotion in Cluttered Environments
2011. 15th International Symposium on Robotics Research, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, August 28-September 1, 2011.The Accuracy of Automatic Photogrammetric Techniques on Ultra-light UAV Imagery
2011. UAV-g 2011 – Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Geomatics, Zürich, CH, September 14-16, 2011.myCopter: Enabling Technologies for Personal Air Transport Systems
2011. RAeS Rotorcraft Conference: The Future Rotorcraft – Enabling Capability Through the Application of Technology, London, UK, 15-16th June 2011.Enabling Collective Operation of Indoor Flying Robots
Lausanne, EPFL, 2011.Energy-Efficient Indoor Search by Swarms of Flying Robots without Global Information
Lausanne, EPFL, 2011.Enabling Large-Scale Collective Systems in Outdoor Aerial Robotics
Lausanne, EPFL, 2011.Dealing with Mid-Air Collisions in Dense Collective Aerial Systems
Journal of Field Robotics. 2011. Vol. 28, num. 3, p. 405-423. DOI : 10.1002/rob.20385.2010
Review of Light-weight Payloads for MAVs and Experiments with Thermopiles
2010
Thermal soaring flight of birds and unmanned aerial vehicles
Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. 2010. Vol. 5, num. 4, p. 1-12. DOI : 10.1088/1748-3182/5/4/045003.Insect Vision: A Few Tricks to Regulate Flight Altitude
Current Biology. 2010. Vol. 20, num. 19, p. R847-R849. DOI : 10.1016/j.cub.2010.08.022.Evolutionary Synthesis of Communication-Based Aerial Swarms
Lausanne, EPFL, 2010.Energy Efficient Swarm Deployment for Search in Unknown Environments
2010. 7th International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ANTS 2010), Brussels, Belgium, September 8-10th 2010. p. 562-563. DOI : 10.1007/978-3-642-15461-4_61.A Perching Mechanism for Micro Aerial Vehicles
Journal of Micro-Nano Mechatronics. 2010. Vol. 5, num. 3-4, p. 77-91. DOI : 10.1007/s12213-010-0026-1.Communication-based Swarming for Flying Robots
2010. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Workshop on Network Science and Systems Issues in Multi-Robot Autonomy, Anchorage, Alaska, May 7, 2010.Energy-Efficient Indoor Search by Swarms of Simulated Flying Robots Without Global Information
Swarm Intelligence. 2010. Vol. 4, num. 2, p. 117-144. DOI : 10.1007/s11721-010-0039-3.Communication-based Leashing of Real Flying Robots
2010. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2010). p. 15-20. DOI : 10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509421.Autonomous flight at low altitude with vision-based collision avoidance and GPS-based path following
2010. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Anchorage, Alaska, May 3-8, 2010. p. 3329-3334. DOI : 10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509273.An Indoor Flying Platform with Collision Robustness and Self-Recovery
2010. 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2010), Anchorage, Alaska, US, May 3-8, 2010. p. 3349-3354. DOI : 10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509338.2009
How to control MAVs in cluttered environments?
2009. Workshop on Micro Aerial Vehicles at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS’2009), St-Louis, October 11-15.optiPilot: control of take-off and landing using optic flow
2009. European Micro Air Vehicle conference and competition 2009 (EMAV ’09), Delft, Netherland, September 14-17, 2009.A Minimalist Control Strategy for Small UAVs
2009. 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent RObots and Systems (IROS), St. Louis, October 11-15, 2009. p. 2873-2878. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2009.5354465.A Miniature Jumping Robot with Self-Recovery Capabilities
2009. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, St. Louis, October 11-15, 2009. p. 583-588. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2009.5354005.Vision-based control of near-obstacle flight
Autonomous Robots. 2009. Vol. 27, num. 3, p. 201-219. DOI : 10.1007/s10514-009-9139-6.Vision-based control of near-obstacle flight
Lausanne, EPFL, 2009.Methods for Artificial Evolution of Truly Cooperative Robots
2009. International Workshop on Artificial Neural Network 2009, Salamanca, Spain, June 10-12, 2009. p. 768-772. DOI : 10.1007/978-3-642-02478-8_96.Evolved swarming without positioning information: an application in aerial communication relay
Autonomous Robots. 2009. Vol. 26, num. 1, p. 21-32. DOI : 10.1007/s10514-008-9104-9.2008
A time-of-travel motion detection chip for steering autonomous robots
2008. Workshop on visual guidance systems for small autonomous aerial vehicles at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS’2008), Nice, 22 September 2008.Near-obstacle flight with small UAVs
2008. UAV’2008, Orlando, June 23-25, 2008.Optic flow to control small UAVs
2008. Workshop on visual guidance systems for small autonomous aerial vehicles at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS’2008), Nice, 22 September 2008.Ishtar: a flexible and lightweight software for remote data access
2008. European Micro Air Vehicle Conference EMAV08, Braunschweig, Germany, July 8-10, 2008.Towards the Self Deploying Microglider, a biomimetic jumping and gliding robot
2008. 4th International Symposium on Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, June 1-6, 2008. p. 41-42.Energy Management for Indoor Hovering Robots
2008. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS’2008), Nice, France, September 22-26, 2008. p. 1242-1247. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2008.4650856.Ant-based Swarming with Positionless Micro Air Vehicles for Communication Relay
Swarm Intelligence. 2008. Vol. 2, num. 2-4, p. 167-188. DOI : 10.1007/s11721-008-0013-5.Visual autopilot for near-obstacle flight
PL2274658; ES2389549; EP2274658; US2011029161; EP2274658; WO2009127907.
2008.A miniature 7g jumping robot
2008. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA’2008), Pasadena, California, May 19-23, 2008. p. 373-378. DOI : 10.1109/ROBOT.2008.4543236.2007
Towards the Self Deploying Microglider; Gliding Flight and Bioinspired Wing Folding Mechanism
2007. International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots, Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland, August 12-17, 2007. p. 61-62.A Simple and Robust Fixed-Wing Platform for Outdoor Flying Robot Experiments
2007. International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots, Monte Verità, Locarno, Switzerland, August 12-17, 2007. p. 69-70.Quadrotor Using Minimal Sensing For Autonomous Indoor Flight
2007. European Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Flight Competition (EMAV2007), Toulouse, France, 17-21 September 2007.Insect-inspired Autonomous Microflyer
2007. International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots, Monte Verità, Switzerland, Monte Verità, Locarno, Switzerland, August 12-17. p. 133-134.A 10-gram Vision-based Flying Robot
Advanced Robotics. 2007. Vol. 21, num. 14, p. 1671-1684. DOI : 10.1163/156855307782227417.Motion Detection Circuits for a Time-To-Travel Algorithm
2007. IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), New Orleans, 27-30 May. p. 3079-3082. DOI : 10.1109/ISCAS.2007.378059.3D Vision-based Navigation for Indoor Microflyers
2007. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA’07), Roma, Italy, April 10th-14th, 2007. p. 1336-1341. DOI : 10.1109/ROBOT.2007.363170.A 1.5g SMA-actuated Microglider looking for the Light
2007. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA’2007), Rome, Italy, 10-14.4.2007. p. 367-372. DOI : 10.1109/ROBOT.2007.363814.2006
Flying over the Reality Gap: From Simulated to Real Indoor Airships
Autonomous Robots. 2006. Vol. 21, num. 3, p. 243-254. DOI : 10.1007/s10514-006-9718-8.A 10-gram Microflyer for Vision-based Indoor Navigation
2006. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS’2006), Beijing, China, October 9-15. p. 3267-3272. DOI : 10.1109/IROS.2006.282436.Vision-based Altitude and Pitch Estimation for Ultra-light Indoor Microflyers
2006. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA’06), Orlando, FL, May, 2006. p. 2836-2841. DOI : 10.1109/ROBOT.2006.1642131.Fly-inspired Visual Steering of an Ultralight Indoor Aircraft
IEEE Transactions on Robotics. 2006. Vol. 22, num. 1, p. 137-146. DOI : 10.1109/TRO.2005.858857.2005
From Wheels to Wings with Evolutionary Spiking Neurons
Artificial Life. 2005. Vol. 11, num. 1-2, p. 121-138. DOI : 10.1162/1064546053278900.Toward 30-gram Autonomous Indoor Aircraft: Vision-based Obstacle Avoidance and Altitude Control
2005. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA’2005), Barcelona, 18-22 April. p. 2594-2599. DOI : 10.1109/ROBOT.2005.1570504.Bio-inspired vision-based flying robots
Lausanne, EPFL, 2005.2004
Optic-flow-based steering and altitude control for ultra-light indoor aircraft
2004