Towards More Autonomous and Safer Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Over the past decade, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have experienced a real boom with a multiplication of their applications in everyday life: aerial photography, infrastructure inspection, agricultural land monitoring and probably automated parcel delivery in the near future. Even if these UAVs have a certain appeal, their level of autonomy is still limited, and the presence of an operator to perform certain manoeuvres is often necessary. A particularly interesting area for many applications is then the completely autonomous take-off and landing, especially on mobile vehicles travelling at high speed. In this vein, our research group's participation in the DJI Challenge 2016 led to the autonomous landing of a drone on a vehicle at speeds of up to 50 km/h, which remains a record to date. The long-term objective of this research program is to make drones safer and more autonomous in order to diversify their applications. To this end, this discovery grant focuses in particular on the take-off and landing phases of drones, and their complete automation. Thanks to the experience acquired by my group, we wish to expand our knowledge in the field and improve the guidance, navigation and control algorithms currently available. For the short-term objectives, we will study the following three themes: (1) high-fidelity modelling of a drone moving at high speed and its behaviour in the wake of a mobile vehicle; (2) the use of bidirectional thrust to increase the agility of multicopters and make the most of their flight envelope; and (3) means for estimating the relative position of the drone in relation to the mobile vehicle, and the take-off, approach and landing algorithms that will use bidirectional thrust. Advances in these three themes will expand the capabilities of drones and improve their autonomy. The research conducted will have a significant impact on the scientific community and the UAV industry, which will be able to offer more efficient solutions or use these results in their own applications. At present, the training of highly qualified personnel in this field is essential. With a growing market, the sector needs more and more experts: this research program will train people with advanced theoretical knowledge and practical experience acquired in our laboratory.