The Computational Intelligence Group (GIC) of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) has designed new, low-cost, reproducible technology for all types of aerial robots.
Julián Estévez-Sanz holds a PhD in Computer Engineering. He lectures in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering (Gipuzkoa).
Using only on-board sensors and cameras, the UPV/EHU researcher Julián Estévez has developed low-cost, autonomous, navigation technology to prevent two or more drones whose paths cross in mid-air from colliding with each other. He has achieved positive, encouraging results.
A study using a set of drones and conducted by the Computational Intelligence Group (GIC) of the UPV/EHU has confirmed that “‘despite the reduced cost of the technology, the solution we have developed has been successfully validated in commercial drones. Using simple, low-cost equipment and an algorithm based on artificial vision and colour identification, we have developed a robust piece of technology to satisfactorily prevent collision between drones and which can be easily extrapolated to most commercial and research aerial robots; we have also made available the complete software code for the solution,” said Julián Estévez, a UPV/EHU researcher.
Most of the drones we are familiar with are manned, even if they are outside the operator’s view. For a drone to be fully autonomous, it has to be able to make flight decisions on its own and without human intervention, in other words, to decide for itself how to avoid collisions, maintain its course in the face of wind gusts, control flight speed, dodge buildings, trees, etc.
“This work is a small step towards fully autonomous navigation, without any human intervention, so that drones can decide which manoeuvre to perform, which direction to take, thus preventing collisions with each other or with other airborne obstacles. If we assume that, in the future, our airspace will be much more populated by commercial services performed by these drones, our work is a small contribution in this respect,” said Julián Estévez.
“We equipped each drone with a red card that allows the software algorithm to detect the presence of an approaching drone and measure its proximity,” explained Julián Estévez.
In addition, “when the percentage of the colour red on the screen increases, it means that the drones are approaching each other head-on. So when a threshold is exceeded, the robot knows that it has to perform the avoidance manoeuvre. All this happens autonomously, without the human operator intervening. It’s a simple way to prevent collisions, and can be performed by low-cost sensors and equipment”, highlighted Julián Estévez. It is not unlike what happens when a person is walking down the street and sees someone approaching from the left, in which case the person tries to move to the right so that they do not collide with each other.
Julián Estévez-Sanz holds a PhD in Computer Engineering. He lectures in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering – Gipuzkoa and conducts his research work in the Computational Intelligence Group (GIC) of the UPV/EHU. He is also a science populariser via his blog https://jeibros.blogspot.com.
