Achievement

IGERT trainee Nicu Stiurca developed a system for autonomous real-time localization of very small size unmanned quad-rotor helicopters. Previous systems estimated the position of a group quad-rotors offboard via a motion capture system placed in the environment and transmitted the positions to each quad-rotor. In Stiurca's system, each quad-rotor estimates its own position by using images of identifiable visual targets that are placed in the environment, and combining the visual information in real time with input from inertial sensors.