Bezzo, Nicola / SEAS

The Dream about (Autonomous) Flying

Flying is the dream of many but only a few can truly experience it freely. On the other hand, new advances in sensing and computation are making robotic systems more and more a reality. Among robotics, autonomous mobile robots and in particular aerial vehicles are entering our society and finding many applications like aerial photography, infrastructure inspection, surveillance, hobby application, and even search and rescue operations. With this proposal, I will immerse students into the world of autonomous aerial technologies with several activities that include: 1) a one day mini course on principle of control and motion planning of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), followed by 2) hands-on experiments with real UAVs in the PI’s state of the art laboratory, 3) field experiments at the UVA-owned Milton Airfield with autonomous UAVs specifically built for inspections with first-person view (FPV) experience in which students will have the opportunity of flying autonomously, as if they are sitting on the UAV, and 4) a visit to CoStar - a leader in the field infrastructure aerial photography - to interact with their engineers and learn more about aerial applications and in particular challenges to expose students to societal problems related to robotics society perception, safety, security and privacy issues.

Budget:

The $3500 will be used to:

1) cover costs associated to travelling to the Milton airport and visiting CoStar

2) to purchase some FPV hardware and a small UAV that students will use for this experience in the lab

3) to cover some time for the PI and a PhD student to assist with experiments.