DelFly Explorer - The World's First Intelligent, Flapping Micro-Drone Developed By Delft University

Flying bots, robots and drones have been a subject of interest to robotics enthusiasts and engineers all over the world. Most flying vehicles available today do not make use of the flapping mechanic that is principally the most dominated factor of flying in the natural world. A team of Engineers from the Delft University of Technology have developed a dragonfly-like looking micro-drone called DelFly Explorer. It is the world's first MAV that can perform autonomous flight. DelFly Explorer packs a stereo vision system with processing onboard which is used to avoid obstacles. Equipped with a barometer to maintain its height, at 20 grams DelFly Explorer can perform a take-off, ascend to a chosen height and fly around for up to 9 minutes without the need of external control with its currently battery.

Incorporating a the a stereo vision sensor camera, the DelFly Explorer is combined with other vision based methods to cope with areas that lack visual texture. Add to that, a control algorithm that performs short term path planning, the vision system is able to guide the DelFly Explorer along an obstacle free trajectory. Moreover, by redesigning the airframe and the motor the structural weight has been reduced while the lift capacity has been increased significantly. Also the design of tail surfaces has been changed to increase the pitch and yaw stability, while having better and more independent control authority on the rolling motion. In the future, the team plans to use the gyroscopes with the accelerometers and magnetometers for attitude determination too.


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